NaySha Paw asks her father about the work she’s been doing, talking to other Karen immigrants. Whether he’s afraid. What he thinks will happen.
The former Buddhist monk, who now cleans buildings in St. Paul, thinks for a bit. When he answers, it’s with a calm, slight smile for the 17-year-old girl leaning anxiously toward him across their kitchen table.
“I’m not worried about you. … You have an experience, for you, that is unfolding,” Lah Toh says. “Yes, Karen keep their head down — but this is also part of your learning.”
NaySha Paw hasn’t been keeping her head down. She and five other Karen teenagers — a younger generation that is now hesitantly testing the rights and responsibilities they’ve been told they have in America — are doing things their parents would never dare.
Back in December, they knocked on every door in her apartment complex, Como Place Apartments at 195 Edmund Ave. in St. Paul. They spoke with more than 50 residents — mostly Karen, and mostly older than them — about how they were being treated.
Frogtown Neighborhood Association officials say residents told the teens — who served as translators for their staff — plenty that troubled them.
Lah Toh turns to a reporter and says, “Families came to me and asked if my daughter is trustable and the work is trustable, and if they (the teenagers) are really going to help us. And my answer was yes.”
TENTATIVE OUTREACH
Karen people, St. Paul’s most recent wave of immigrants, have reasons to ask those questions. They started arriving in the U.S. in the mid-2000s, originally from Burma and, later, refugee camps in Thailand.
“There was a lot of betrayal. Mostly by the government,” says NaySha Paw, who arrived in the U.S. with her family in 2010. “In my camp, there were people that were supposed to protect you, people who were in charge of things, but they don’t always protect you. Because of that, Karen, they don’t trust people who are not beside them. Especially with money.”
In recent years, officials in St. Paul and Roseville have talked about the difficulty of outreach toward the Karen community, at least with Lah Toh’s generation. And now?
“It’s hard to change your core just instantly,” NaySha Paw says. “The elders, they say, ‘This is how it is.’ ”
But after joining the Wilder Foundation’s Youth Leadership Initiative through her school last year — and through that getting an internship with the neighborhood association — NaySha Paw doesn’t believe that’s “how it is” anymore.
PAYING FOR REPAIRS
In January, the Frogtown Neighborhood Association — the area’s local district council — sent a letter to Como Place’s landlords, who they believe are Vishnu and Chandrawatee Lalta of Eagan.
County tax statements for the complex, directed to Comoplace Apartments LLC, are sent to the Laltas’ home address in Eagan. Chandrawatee Lalta is listed as the manager of the LLC in its Minnesota Secretary of State business filing, which has no listed agent.
The letter alleges that multiple residents were told they had to make cash payments with no receipts to resolve normal maintenance issues — things the landlord should pay for under state law. They also allegedly were forced to pay for updating windows and new blinds in the building.
It also alleges that Karen residents are being specifically targeted, based on the fact that the other residents they spoke with didn’t report any such issues.
Finally, the letter also spoke of a “serious infestation” of roaches and bed bugs in the over 100-unit complex. Association co-director Caty Royce produced a photo she took, showing dozens of roaches in a kitchen drawer.
The letter asks that all the money taken for maintenance issues be repaid.
Still, the Frogtown Association letter doesn’t mention specific tenants.
And that’s the problem, said the landlords’ attorney, Bradley Schaeppi, of Wayzata-based Minnesota Landlord Law. None of the tenants came directly to the landlords with complaints, Schaeppi said.
Schaeppi said in a written statement that the landlord’s “primary interest remains to review and reply to specific tenant concerns the moment they are asserted,” and added that the landlord “reiterates its letter offer to sit down with the Frogtown Neighborhood Association or a tenant advocate attorney, to listen to specific tenant or unit allegations.”
But this week, Schaeppi said the landlord worked well with the Karen Organization of Minnesota — and wanted a meeting at the property with tenants and that organization, rather than the neighborhood association.
“Comoplace Apt, LLC believes KOM to be the best suited organization to directly communicate any Como Place tenant concerns,” Schaeppi said in the statement. He added that the Frogtown association made tenants sign an English form.
Neighborhood association officials said every contact with a tenant had a translator present for all interactions.
They’re currently working with two legal aid groups; one of them, Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, sat down with multiple tenants at length this month, with a translator.
Approached in person at the building’s business office, Chandrawatee Lalta declined comment beyond saying the allegations were not true, and referred questions to her attorney, Schaeppi.
A STATE STANDARD
The Pioneer Press spoke with four households in the complex through a translator, including NaySha Paw’s.
Her father, Lah Toh, said that when his toilet leaked, he was asked by management at the building to pay $200 for it. He said his sister, in another apartment, paid something similar.
Another resident, Ka Yoe Paw, spoke of being charged $100 by management for someone to come into her unit with a plunger to unclog her toilet in less than five minutes.
Another tenant, Htou Mya Paw, said that after the door-knock by the neighborhood association, management stopped by her place to fix her leaking kitchen pipes for no charge — and added that “if there’s anything, just let me know.”
State law requires landlords to cover tenant maintenance problems — unless it can be proven the problem was caused by a tenant’s “woeful, malicious or irresponsible” conduct.
“If you take a baseball bat to your sink and break it, that’s woeful, malicious conduct. If your sink or toilet just gets clogged, that’s not. That’s just something that sometimes happens,” said Margaret Kaplan, an attorney with the Housing Justice Center, the other legal aid group that met with the neighborhood association about Como Place.
“Property maintenance is the responsibility of the owner. That’s why you pay rent.”
Said Lah Toh, “We don’t know the rules, we don’t know the laws, and we don’t have anyone to back us up. So whatever they say, we will do it. We need a roof over our head.”
“The thing about Karen people is they just sign. Because they need to sign,” said another of the Karen teen translators, Lay May Htoo. “Most people said they paid because other people pay.”
HOW MANY MICE?
All four tenants who spoke with the Pioneer Press told of either mice, roaches or bedbugs. They said yes, at times, the landlord came in to spray for the pests — but it had little long-term effect.
Schaeppi, the attorney for the landlord, said they have a contract with an exterminator that visits monthly.
As far as the city is concerned, “There’s no damning evidence here that this is a poorly managed property,” said Travis Bistodeau, deputy director of St. Paul’s Department of Safety and Inspections, which recently had an inspector examine the property. “With a multi-unit property like that built in the 1940s, it’s not going to be unusual for there to be bugs and cockroaches in units. We’re not saying it’s a great thing. But rarely would you be able to fully eradicate them.”
There were six complaints made to the city in 2019, and four in 2018.
“I’ve seen a lot more and I’ve seen a lot less. It’s what I would expect (for a building of that size) in terms of the numbers of complaints,” Bistodeau said.
Neighborhood association co-director Royce said, “I have been trying to bring substandard properties up to code for 30 years; I have an idea of average problems. The roach drawers that I saw were not average — not at all what I would expect.”
And what if the tenants aren’t naturally inclined to complain?
“Even with my friends, first they said, ‘Everything is OK,’ ” NaySha Paw said. “Then they started trusting us, because me and another girl, we live there. And told us they were being charged. Being represented by people you know and people who are familiar is really important.”
THE BALANCE
Kaplan, with the Housing Justice Center, noted that St. Paul — unlike Minneapolis — doesn’t have city-based rental licensing for its multi-unit buildings.
“So it doesn’t have the same kind of hooks for accountability. (In Minneapolis), the city can theoretically pull their rental license,” Kaplan said.
Ramsey County Commissioner Trista MatasCastillo said she has “grave concerns about the condition (of the building).” But she adds, “I want to be careful that we can make improvements so that no one is displaced.”
MatasCastillo refers to a delicate balance concerning landlords that cater to recent immigrants — balance St. Paul city officials like city council President Amy Brendmoen have noted in the past.
On one hand, there’s a need to hold landlords that cater to immigrants to an acceptable standard. On the other, if they crack down too hard and close those buildings down, who will rent to them?
“No one should be displaced — and no one should be living with 100 roaches in your drawer. … Nor do you have to live where you’re being targeted as new immigrants,” said Royce. “We just need to fix what we have.”
NaySha Paw said she is convinced that helping her community find a voice can only help the equation.
“I feel there was a disconnect,” she said. “But now because we are growing and moving forward, and this is the reality … people like me, we can say, ‘I live here, too.’ ”
