Protecting Hellish Tenants
One Queens couple’s real-life horror story exposes the insanity of New York’s housing laws. Retirees Susana and Joseph Landa, both 68, thought they’d landed a gem last October when they bought a $2 million home in Douglastown, Queens, near a family who could help look after their adult son with Down Syndrome. But they have yet to move in, even as they’re stuck paying taxes and utility bills for the property.
Ben Flores, a former caregiver to the deceased previous owner, has been squatting on the property since January 2023, per court documents, and refuses to leave. He’s even tried to rent out rooms.
City law grants “squatters rights” that frustrate any attempt to evict anyone who claims to have lawfully occupied a unit for at least 30 days; that let Flores call the cops on the Landas when they tried to enter the home they own.
They’ve been to civil court five times to try to get him out; at a hearing in early January, he showed up without an attorney — which under the law halted proceedings, rather than forcing him to represent himself or forfeit. Then he filed for bankruptcy, which under city law blocks the owners from even continuing the case to get him out. The Landas can’t even get another hearing until April; what “right” might he exploit by then?
And this case is far from unique: In early February, a pair of serial squatters trashed the Queens home where they’d been living rent-free for nearly four years before fleeing, owing at least $48,000 in back rent. Other Queens landlords have struggled to evict tenants running brothels and Bronx ones to oust drug-dealing squatters.
Yet progressives in the Legislature keep pushing to pass “Good Cause Eviction,” a law that’d make it even harder to oust bad tenants statewide (while also imposing statewide rent control).
City and state, New York law goes so far to protect “tenants” that it enables the utterly unscrupulous — and the ideologues are looking to make it even easier for the abusers to turn innocents’ dreams into nightmares.