OUT AT HOME ‘BASE’
Vacate order for cellar dweller in bldg. feud
The city will finally boot an alleged Brooklyn basement squatter more than four months after declaring his pad illegal and “hazardous.”
The move by the Buildings Department to eject former building superintendent Anthony Venturelli from his cellar dwelling at 1313 West Sixth St. in Bensonhurst comes amid a raging “only in New York” battle between him and the 42-unit property’s landlords.
Both sides accuse the other of harassment, bad behavior — and clogging the building’s pipes, causing sewage to back up.
The landlords, John and Silvana DiMaggio, say that, as a super, Venturelli fought with tenants, cursed at their kids and once smashed his head into a barbecue. Venturelli accuses the couple of turning him into a seven-day-a-week “slave” who was forced to shovel snow a week after suffering a heart attack.
The DiMaggios said that they axed Venturelli in August after three years and that he had secretly built the illegal apartment in the basement, constructing walls and installing a kitchenette and stove.
Venturelli claims the DiMaggios gave him the basement living quarters when he was hired in 2018. He said they promised to move him into a regular apartment in the building when one became available but never followed through.
What’s not in dispute is the city’s Aug. 16 vacate order, which slapped the DiMaggios with at least $9,000 in fines for the illegal space and declared that no one should be living there.
The basement battle, and the city’s initial inaction, comes weeks after 13 people died — many in flooded basement apartments — when remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the city.
It is the landlord’s responsibility to make sure no one is living in an apartment under a vacate order, the DOB said, but the DiMaggios claim Venturelli ripped the vacate order off the basement entrance and went back in the same day.
They also say he locked himself inside at times, refusing to leave.
“I never gave him permission to sleep there,” John DiMaggio told The Post. “I never gave him permission to build himself a kitchenette. I never gave him permission to put a shower in. He had all the time in the world to do it. I wasn’t babysitting him.”
Venturelli worked in the building for a tumultuous three years, according to the DiMaggios.
“He was constantly fighting with the tenants, yelling and screaming and even cursing at the children for not putting garbage in the right receptacle,” DiMaggio said.
The couple sued Venturelli in Brooklyn Supreme Court this month, accusing him of “hazardous and illegal” acts by living there.
DiMaggio now fears Venturelli could tamper with the building’s gas meter, circuit breaker or boiler.
“He has those controls, and the fact that they don’t allow me to get back control of my own building, that’s a major problem. I’m asking for help, and they’re not helping me,” he said of the city.
But Venturelli claims his time with the DiMaggios has been “menacing, harassing and intimidating.”
“I never paid rent to begin with. I was the superintendent. This is the apartment he gave me,” Venturelli said, claiming he was paid just $400 every two weeks. He says he has nowhere else to go. “There’s no one to help me. I have no family to lean on,” he said, noting he cannot leave to even look for a new home because “I’m afraid my door’s gonna be kicked in and my stuff ’s gonna be on the street.”
A DOB spokesman said the agency would coordinate with law enforcement and enforce the vacate order “in the interest of public safety.”