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Squatter stories have become fairly commonplace over the last few years, increasing particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Affordable housing has been scarce and housing costs have become prohibitive.
Tom Diana owns an eight-unit building in Brooklyn‘s Park Slope neighborhood in New York City. He says he’s had a squatter living in one of his units for eight long years.
“She was a companion to a senior citizen who was disabled, but when the senior citizen died in 2016, she just decided she wasn’t leaving,” he explains.
Diana says the woman hasn’t made any rent payments since January 2019, and that she owes more than $250,000 in back rent.
He took her to court almost immediately. So how has this managed to drag out for eight years? And is the state doing anything to help?
The problem with squatters in New York
For Diana, the real issue seems to be the court proceedings.
“The court is backlogged,” Diana says. “COVID delayed things, but she has switched attorneys several times which has also delayed proceedings as well. Every time we go to court, they come up with a new issue. The case keeps getting stalled. We’ve lost at least five years by bouncing back and forth with all this nonsense.”
In court documents, the squatter said that going to the bank and the post office was an “inconvenience” for her which is one reason she hadn’t made rent payments.
“She also tried to get the rent reversed to what it was 30 years ago,” Diana adds.
Diana says he can’t call the police because they won’t get involved.
“And you can’t legally lock out a tenant in New York either,” he explains. “So my hands are tied.”
Diana even paid a visit to his state senator with several other landlords who were in the same boat. The senator told him, “Most tenants pay their rent. We don’t want to touch it—it’s in the courts.”
Diana’s case is currently with the court attorney to get a new judge assigned, and the squatter just filed another appeal.
“I’ve spent $40,000 in legal fees so far trying to remove this squatter, because my lawyer gave me a fixed rate,” Diana says. “Because of all the rent money I’ve lost, my 401K is gone, my kid’s college fund is gone. I’m losing $4,000 a month.”
Lawyers weigh in
After speaking with two different lawyers—neither of whom represents Diana in this case—the core issue is that the woman in question isn’t technically a squatter. As a former paying tenant, she has different rights and protections that are working in her favor.
Property advocate Tevis Verrett, principal of Triumvirate Law Group and founder of Squatter Lockout, explains, “There are grifters that use loosened and tenant-friendly laws to game the system and prey upon naïve landlords. The mom-and-pop landlord is under siege.”
New York attorney Maria Beltrani, partner at Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas, reviewed the case and adds, “Because she’s a month-to-month tenant, that’s one of the reasons this is taking so long. Tenants have more legal protections than a typical squatter, who doesn’t have many legal protections at all.”
Another reason the case has dragged on so long, according to Beltrani, is because the apartment in question may be subject to rent stabilization.
Legal Services NYC, the tenant’s attorney, recently told News 12 the unit was unlawfully removed from rent stabilization, and that the rent dispute is still pending in court.
Beltrani says even though the dispute has been pending since 2017, that doesn’t really surprise her.
“Some cases do last that long,” she says. “The landlord might have better luck with terminating her tenancy and bringing on eviction proceedings.”
Hope on the horizon?
Diana certainly isn’t the only New Yorker dealing with this type of headache.
Cases of NYC squatters jumped as much as 20% between 2022 and 2004, and Newsweek reports that New York City’s squatters’ rights are the most lenient in the U.S.
However, there were two bills proposed last year in New York to help change that, though both are still being debated:
Bill on squatting reports: This bill would require the police department, in collaboration with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, and any other relevant agency to issue a quarterly report on locations in which persons are squatting in the city.
Bill on creating a squatter task force: This bill would create an interagency taskforce to address issues regarding squatting in the city, including the removal of persons squatting on properties, helping them find legitimate housing, identifying properties where people are or might be squatting, communicating with the owners of abandoned properties to ensure that such properties do not remain abandoned, and notifying the owners of abandoned properties of their obligation to maintain such properties, and enforcing that obligation.
Verrett is less than impressed with both bills and says they won’t do much to move the needle.
“The first one is just window dressing, and the second paints the squatter as the victim,” he says.
Diana says neither bill gives him much hope.
“The squatters in this city have more rights than the landlords do,” he says. “That’s the bottom line.”
Does Diana believe his case will ever end?
“No,” he says. “The next court date has been pushed out to October. And then there’ll be more delays and more appeals. My case should have never dragged on this long, and there’s honestly no end in sight.”