'Professional squatter' pays no rent, 'terrorizes' LIC neighbors
A tenant who hasn't paid her $100-a-month rent in more than a decade is back in court, fighting to hold on to the two-bedroom Queens apartment she inherited through a controversial death-bed adoption, The Post has learned.
Maria DeTommaso, 74, has lived in the rent-controlled railroad flat on the bottom floor of a Long Island City row house since at least 2002, where neighbors say she causes many problems.
'I think she's a demon in human skin because of what she puts people through,' said Anjanie Narine, who has lived next door to DeTommaso for more than 20 years. 'Every interaction with her is negative. She terrorizes everyone, and acts as if she owns the building.'
DeTommaso scored her sweet rent deal when she moved in with an elderly former dock worker, Nicholas 'Nicky' DeTommaso, who had the original lease on the apartment. Days before he died in 2009, the then 58-year-old Maria convinced the 85-year-old retiree to adopt her.
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9 Maria DeTommaso has been fighting eviction from her $100 per month rent-controlled apartment in Queens for years. A fellow tenant who lives on the same floor called her 'a demon' who has rented rooms in the two-bedroom flat on Airbnb.
Brigitte Stelzer
9 DeTommaso moved into the apartment after initially cat-sitting for a friend in the 90s, according to a neighbor. She is pictured at the apartment last week.
Brigitte Stelzer
Nine years later, the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal granted DeTommaso 'successor rights' to the apartment, keeping its rent at $100 and allowing her to stay in perpetuity. Similar units in the building now rent just below $2,000.
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During the time she has lived in the unit, neighbors say she has 'terrorized' them by renting out part of the apartment on Airbnb, ushering in a steady stream of dozens of tourists from around the world who rented rooms from her for $55 a night, according to complaints made to the Department of Buildings and online ads.
One longtime fellow tenant in the six-unit building said DeTommaso, who is also known as Pamela Becker and Prema Deodhar, has even changed the locks on the front doors and invited a steady stream of veterans from a nearby shelter who have caused havoc in the building.
9 Maria Detomasso and Nicholas 'Nicky' Detomasso, who adopted her shortly before his death, in an old photo where they are celebrating together.
Angel Chevrestt
9 Maria DeTommaso convinced Nicholas DeTommaso to adopt her as his daughter in the weeks before his death, and then gained succession rights from the state to his $100-a-month apartment a few years ago.
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For years, The Post has documented attempts by the building's octogenarian owners, Sugrim and Kowsila Outar, to evict DeTommaso from the apartment. They are scheduled to return to Queens Housing Court on May 6.
'Her case has already gone through five of the judges here in Queens, and benefited from every change in the housing laws since COVID,' said Elan Layliev, the attorney for the Outars who is fighting to evict DeTommasso.
'[It's been] a wild ride. Ms. DeTommaso has utilized every loophole in the court system to prolong and delay this trial.'
For her part, DeTommaso told The Post last week the claims against her are exaggerated and designed to kick her out of her home.
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'I won the succession,' she said. 'This is sick. I'm the legal tenant. I have every right to be here and I don't know how people can lie so much. They are trying to evict me, but my lawyer says I don't have to worry.'
9 The building where DeTommaso lives, which is also occupied by her landlords, whom she has been in a 10 year protracted legal battle with.
Helayne Seidman
9 The owners of a six-apartment complex in Long Island City have spent years in court trying to evict a rent-controlled tenant who hasn't paid rent in more than a decade.
Brigitte Stelzer
DeTommaso's lawyer, Zara Feingold, is a legal aid attorney who works with the New York Legal Assistance Group, according to court documents and her LinkedIn page, which means DeTommaso doesn't have to pay her for representation.
Under New York law, she also doesn't have to pay rent while the legal case with her landlords is ongoing, which is currently a decade. Still, she has prevoiusly said she puts rent money into an escrow account so it can be paid after the legal matter is settled.
DeTommaso, who lives with her two dogs — a miniature grey hound and a dachshund — told The Post she recently broke her hip in the apartment because the landlords have not done necessary repairs. She said her oven doesn't work, and complained about roaches and mice in the living space.
However, according to Layliev, DeTommasso will not allow workers contracted by the Outars into her apartment and has previously hired homeless veterans to do the work and told them to present the bills to the owners.
9 Maria DeTommaso in the brightly decorated apartment in 2013.
Helayne Seidman
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9 DeTommaso holding up a picture of Nicky. She says she still has a good relationship with his family and talks to them regularly.
Helayne Seidman
DeTommasso was born Pamela Rose Becker on March 1, 1951. She grew up in Washington DC and attended a series of posh private schools. Her father served as US ambassador to Honduras during the Ford administration and her brother, Ralph Becker, is a former mayor of Salt Lake City.
A yoga enthusiast, she showed up at the Long Island City building to cat sit for a friend in the late 1990s. When the friend returned, she claimed she had nowhere to live and asked Nicky if she could spend a few days, said Narine.
She never left. Nicky, who was known in the neighborhood as 'Uncle Nicky,' had moved to the apartment in 1924 as an infant. He lived there with his mother, three brothers and two sisters, and stayed until his death on July 15, 2009.
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9 DeTommaso has been accused by neighbors of converting some of the rooms in the apartment and renting them out for $55 a night to tourists.
A devoted 'Star Trek' fan, he played stickball on the street when he was a child and chain-smoked cigarettes on the stoop, helping his neighbors secure parking spots when he was older, according to 'Nicky D from LIC: A Narrative Portrait' by writer and artist Warren Lehrer.
Five years after moving in, DeTommasso secured Nicky's power of attorney in 2007. When his health was in decline, she drove him around the city to do errands and to see his doctor in a series of cars he bought for her, according to an interview with The Post in 2018.
'He loved me, and his whole family still calls me,' said DeTommaso last week.
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But Narine, an office worker, said she recalled Nicky had allegedly tried to kick her out almost as soon as she moved in. 'He woke up early, and every morning I would hear him curse at her to get the f–k out,' she said. 'I'm next door and the walls are pretty thin.'
The protracted battle with the Outars, immigrants from Guyana who also live in the building, has taken its toll on the elderly couple, claimed Narine, adding that Sugrim Outar, 85, has had several heart attacks over the years.
'They are both physically weak,' said Narine. 'I have no doubt in my mind this battle with this professional squatter has taken years off their lives.'
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