Squatter Who Hasn’t Paid Rent for 10 Years

According to the New York Post, a Brooklyn landlord has lost $ 325,000 and his daughter’s college fund to a 10-year-old case of a squatter who won’t pay rent and won’t leave.

Thomas Diana has spent a decade in New York state court trying to remove a squatter from his property.

The New York Housing Court system keeps adjourning the matter. It took him five years to get to the deposition. The tenant was crushed in the deposition, but it doesn’t matter . . .

Comments: Doubtless a Mamdani voter.

"Thomas Diana has spent a decade in New York state court trying to remove a squatter from his property."

"The tenant, identified in court papers as Rebecca Carmel, maintains that the apartment is legally rent-stabilized but that Diana schemed to exempt it from those restrictions to hike the rent — and that she’s put her rent in an escrow account till the matter is settled.

Diana said the beef began when he enlisted Carmel to move into the apartment to serve as a live-in caregiver for an ailing elderly tenant and a close friend, Linda Rogers.

The two women split the monthly rent, with Rogers paying $1,000 and Carmel chipping in $850, and later $950, court records show.

According to Diana, Carmel initially asked for time to find a new place, which he agreed to. But instead of eventually leaving, she remained and claimed she was only required to pay her $950 share of the rent under the earlier deal when Rogers was still alive.

The case ended up in court, and in 2017, a judge imposed an $831 monthly “use and occupancy” payment on Carmel while the dispute played out — money Diana claims she only made until 2019.

Diana argued that the building qualifies for an “owner or employee occupied” exemption from rent-stabilization regs because he lived there himself in the past and later employed Rogers briefly as building super before she became seriously ill.

The case has since been mired in the courts, with Diana claiming Carmel has dragged her feet over the dispute for years, frequently changing lawyers when she shows up in court and asking for delays.

He said he’s meanwhile going broke and estimates he’s lost between $275,000 to $325,000 in rent, not including legal fees.

...

Gilfoil said a judge had ruled that Diana improperly took the apartment off the rent-stabilization rolls and said all that’s left to be decided are the legal rent and any damages that should be awarded.

In New York City, the Rent Guidelines Board sets limits on annual rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments, which typically vary between 1% and 5%, according to the board.

Diana said he’s now stuck in limbo.

“I blame everybody,” he said. “The media people, they’ve made owners out to be the most evil bstards, evicting everybody on Christmas Eve, which is nonsense. They pretend you can evict somebody in a month. No, it’s two years plus, even on a simple case.