On the Rent Stabilization Act – Matthew Haag in NYT:

‘On a June afternoon in 2018, a man named Mickey Barreto checked into the New Yorker Hotel. He was assigned Room 2565, a double-bed accommodation with a view of Midtown Manhattan almost entirely obscured by an exterior wall. For a one-night stay, he paid $200.57.
But he did not check out the next morning. Instead, he made the once-grand hotel his full-time residence for the next five years, without ever paying another cent.’

(…)

‘When it opened in 1930, to great fanfare, the New Yorker Hotel was not just the largest in the city but also the second largest in the world. It was an opulent hotel of the future, with 92 telephone operators, a power generating plant and a radio with four channels in each room.
Today, the mystique has faded, though the property still attracts tourists with its central location. Less than half the rooms are open to guests, and the hallway carpet is tattered and lined with brightly lit vending machines of sodas and snacks. Most of the building is occupied by followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who bought the hotel in 1976 and made it his organization’s headquarters.’

(…)

‘With their laptops open, he claimed, they explored whether the New Yorker Hotel was subject to the rule, a little-known section of a state housing law, the Rent Stabilization Act.
Passed in 1969, the law created a system of rent regulation across the city. But also subject to the law was a swath of hotel rooms, specifically those in large hotels built before 1969, whose rooms could be rented for less than $88 a week in May 1968.
According to the law, a hotel guest could become a permanent resident by requesting a lease at a discounted rate. And any guest-turned-resident also had to be allowed access to the same services as a nightly guest, including room service, housekeeping and the use of facilities, like the gym.
The room becomes, essentially, a rent-subsidized apartment inside a hotel.’

(…)

‘According to court documents, Mr. Barreto left his room the next morning, rode the elevator to the lobby and greeted a hotel employee at the front desk. He handed over a letter addressed to the manager: He wanted a six-month lease.
The employee dialed the manager, and after a brief exchange, Mr. Barreto was told there was no such thing as a lease at the hotel and that without booking another night, he would have to vacate the room by noon. The couple did not remove their belongings, so the bellhops did — and Mr. Barreto headed to New York City Housing Court in Lower Manhattan and sued the hotel.
In a three-page, handwritten affidavit dated June 22, 2018, Mr. Barreto cited state laws, local codes and a past court case in arguing that his request for a lease made him a “permanent resident of the hotel.” Removal of his items amounted to an illegal eviction, he said.
At a hearing on July 10, in the absence of any hotel representatives to oppose the lawsuit, the judge, Jack Stoller, ruled in Mr. Barreto’s favor. Judge Stoller not only agreed with his arguments; he even cited the same case law as Mr. Barreto and ordered the hotel “to restore petitioner to possession of the subject premises forthwith by providing him with a key.”’

(…)

‘Mr. Barreto said he spoke to a sheriff’s deputy, an investigator in the department, who asked why he was filing so many times. He said he responded that he had been given possession of the property but was having technical difficulties.
At the same time, the hotel’s owners had filed their own lawsuit to evict Mr. Barreto, claiming the hotel was exempt from the housing law’s hotel provision. Ultimately, the lawyers could not produce documentation from May 1968 to prove the hotel’s weekly rate was at the time more than $88 a week. The judge dismissed the suit.’

(…)

‘Mr. Barreto now had a recorded deed showing he had ownership of the hotel, but the true and only owner since 1976 was still the Unification Church.
Mr. Barreto’s next moves went far beyond the rights of a now permanent guest.
He immediately fired off an email to a lawyer for the hotel, demanding to know about the property’s recent finances, and included a claim that he was owed $15 million in profits.
“That payment is past due,” he wrote, “and is due immediately.” A few days later, another demand: The 38th floor needed to be cleared of guests. “I need to do an inspection of the building with my architect ASAP,” he said.
The lawyer quickly responded, “What are you referring to?” “I have ownership rights in that building,” Mr. Barreto replied. “That’s what I’m referring to.”’

(…)

‘Representing himself in court, Mr. Barreto insisted he had done nothing wrong. “As for me proclaiming to people I was the owner, I only did that after I had the deed,” he said in court.
A few months later, the judge issued a ruling: “The subject deed is a forged deed by all accounts,” he wrote. Mr. Barreto did not own the property.
But that was not the end.
Despite the judge’s ruling about ownership, Mr. Barreto was still a legal resident of the hotel.
His home, Room 2565, is near the end of a long narrow hallway that zigs and zags from the elevators. Around the corner is Room 2549, where Muhammad Ali spent the night in 1971 after losing the so-called Fight of the Century to Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden.
With no job, Mr. Barreto said, he spent hours in his room every day, researching his family’s history in Brazil, where he was born and raised in the southern river town of Uruguaiana. He has an angular, youthful face and military-style haircut and fidgets with his clothes as he talks.
A relative said that he had excelled in school in Brazil, had never gotten into trouble and moved to the United States in 1990s. As a teenager, he was considered particularly gifted — the smartest child in the family.
But in recent years, he developed an obsession with his genealogy, claiming to have uncovered a direct connection to Christopher Columbus through Portuguese royalty. In Civil Court, he started to invoke the explorer’s name — “My family name ‘Muniz Barreto Columbus,’” he wrote in a 2021 filing.
Mr. Barreto also delved into the Unification Church’s origins on the Korean Peninsula, its expanding economic interests on other continents and its business connections with North Korea. He started to believe that leaders of the church were sending its income, including from the hotel, to North Korea in violation of sanctions imposed by the United States.’

(…)

‘Mr. Barreto had prevailed in two separate court proceedings; he had a right to a rent-stabilized lease for a room at the New Yorker Hotel. He had access to room service, housekeeping and all the hotel’s facilities.
But he refused to sign a lease — or pay rent.
The hotel’s first offer of a lease, according to him, exceeded the legal rent for a rent-stabilized room. He also declined additional offers over the years, claiming he was concerned about the church’s finances.
Finally, last year, the hotel’s owner succeeded in court against him. A judge ruled in the hotel’s favor, citing Mr. Barreto’s refusal to pay or sign a lease. He was evicted in July.
Even while that second eviction case had been working its way through Housing Court, Mr. Barreto had not stopped portraying himself as the property owner. In September, he submitted another deed showing that the hotel had been transferred once again into his name, and that the city had accepted it.
The transfer caused the hotel to lose a property tax exemption, resulting in a $2.9 million increase on its property tax bill.’

(…)

‘Mr. Barreto was arrested and arraigned later that morning in a Manhattan court on 24 counts — including 14 felony fraud counts — in what prosecutors said was a criminal scheme to claim ownership of the hotel. Mr. Hannan, who Mr. Barreto said was not involved beyond staying with him at the hotel for much of five years, was not charged or accused of any crime.
Mr. Barreto is now awaiting trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and facing several years in prison if convicted. In jail before he was released on his own recognizance, Mr. Barreto said he used his one phone call to dial the White House, leaving a message about his whereabouts.
There was no reason to believe the White House had any interest in the case or any idea who Mickey Barreto was. But you could never quite tell with Mickey — he’d been right once before.’

Read the article here.

The bizarre thing is that Mr. Baretto could have had a lease for room 2565 if could have overcome his delusions about the Unification Church.

Also, I would add that Judge Stoller is partly responsible for some of the delusions of Mr. Baretto.

I also wonder how many people find inspiration in this article and ask for a lease in ‘large hotels built before 1969, whose rooms could be rented for less than $88 a week in May 1968.’

It seems to be worth the effort. As long as you don’t act as if you are the owner of the hotel.