Rockaway property owner can't evict crazy deadbeat tenant

 

 NY Daily News

A Queens woman does her damage from a third-floor apartment with an ocean view: Water left running for days, flooding the building. Smoke pouring from beneath her front door. Hoarding old junk in the hallway, from bicycles to shopping carts. Taking a sledgehammer to her kitchen cabinets.

But her exasperated Rockaways landlord and unnerved neighbors can’t get help from anywhere. Not from the cops. Not from the Fire Department. And not from a Housing Court crippled by the pandemic.

 I’m trying to evict her because she’s a nuisance and the courts are supposedly open for business,” said building owner Martin Hanan, who is out roughly $40,000 in lost rent. “But apparently they’re not, because they really don’t care. They don’t want to hear a word ... Honestly, I gave up on calling the city.”

Hanan compiled a staggering six-page litany of Annamarie Hosang’s behavior, from allegedly tossing a fire extinguisher at the building superintendent to once blasting music from her apartment for 20 straight hours.

A Daily News review of Housing Court documents detailed the woman’s alleged activities, with multiple reports of flooding the Beach 113th St. building, ringing her neighbor’s doorbells and even threatening one of her neighbors with a pipe.

When the NYPD and FDNY arrived on multiple occasions, they dealt with the situation and moved on, the landlord said, adding his tenants declined to bring charges against the woman over fear of reprisals.

Hanan is still awaiting a long-delayed hearing for her eviction, a process that began in Queens Housing Court in September 2020. Things became even more complicated after Hosang twice applied — in October 2021 and this past February — for a COVID relief program that assures her a home during the pandemic.

Hanan says Hosang has paid no rent for her $1,725-a-month residence since April 2021 and that he can’t even lease out the apartment downstairs because the cascading water from above collapsed its ceiling. The stench of mildew from her water-soaked apartment seeps through the building.

Two longtime residents of the nine-unit building shared their own tales, with both asking for anonymity rather than risk incurring their neighbor’s wrath. One of the pair, referring to Hosang only as “the squatter,” recited a list of unnerving incidents — including one where she chased his wife with a shovel.