A Queens woman who has avoided paying her $100 monthly rent for over ten years is back in court as she continues to fight for the right to remain in a rent-controlled apartment that she obtained through a highly disputed deathbed adoption, The New York Post reports.
Seventy-four-year-old Maria DeTommaso has resided in the two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a Long Island City townhouse since at least 2002. According to longtime residents, her presence in the building has been far from peaceful.
“I think she’s a demon in human skin because of what she puts people through,” said Anjanie Narine, who has lived next to DeTommaso for over two decades. “Every interaction with her is negative. She terrorizes everyone, and acts as if she owns the building.”
Maria originally moved into the apartment with Nicholas “Nicky” DeTommaso, an aging former dock worker who held the lease. Just days before his passing in 2009, the then-58-year-old Maria persuaded the 85-year-old man to legally adopt her.
Nearly a decade later, New York’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal officially recognized her as the successor tenant, which locked in the extremely low rent of $100 and granted her permanent tenancy. Meanwhile, other similar apartments in the same row house are being rented for close to $2,000 per month.
Residents claim that since moving in, Maria has made life miserable for others in the building. She reportedly listed the unit on Airbnb, renting out parts of it to international tourists for $55 per night. City records and online listings confirm a steady stream of visitors during that time.
One tenant in the six-unit building alleged that Maria—who also goes by the names Pamela Becker and Prema Deodhar—has repeatedly changed the building’s front door locks and brought in a group of veterans from a nearby shelter, some of whom created disturbances within the property.
The building’s elderly owners, Sugrim and Kowsila Outar, have spent years in legal battles trying to evict her, as previously documented by The Post. They are scheduled to return to Queens Housing Court for the next hearing 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 lawyer representing the Outars in their attempt to reclaim the apartment.
“[It’s been] a wild ride. Ms. DeTommaso has utilized every loophole in the court system to prolong and delay this trial.”
DeTommaso, for her part, insists the accusations are distorted and being used as ammunition to push her out unlawfully.
“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.”
Court records identify her legal representative as Zara Feingold, an attorney with the New York Legal Assistance Group. Since Feingold works in legal aid, DeTommaso does not pay for her defense.
Under current New York law, tenants involved in an unresolved legal dispute with landlords are not required to pay rent until the matter is resolved. Though this case has dragged on for over ten years, DeTommaso has previously stated that she deposits the rent into an escrow account until a final decision is reached.
She shares the apartment with two dogs—a dachshund and a miniature greyhound—and claims she recently fractured her hip due to unresolved maintenance issues. She also alleges her oven is broken and that she’s living among roaches and rodents.
But according to Layliev, DeTommaso refuses to grant entry to workers hired by the building’s owners. Instead, she has allowed homeless veterans to perform the repairs and later instructed them to bill the landlords.
Born as Pamela Rose Becker on March 1, 1951, DeTommaso spent her childhood in Washington, DC, attending prestigious private institutions. Her father held the position of U.S. ambassador to Honduras during the Gerald Ford administration, and her brother, Ralph Becker, once served as the mayor of Salt Lake City.
Her introduction to the Long Island City building began in the late 1990s when she arrived to care for a friend’s cat. After the friend returned, DeTommaso claimed to have nowhere else to live and asked Nicky if she could stay temporarily, according to Narine.
But she never left. Nicky, affectionately known to neighbors as “Uncle Nicky,” first moved into the apartment in 1924 as an infant. He shared the home with his mother and six siblings and lived there for the rest of his life, passing away on July 15, 2009.
Nicky spent his youth playing stickball and, in later years, chain-smoked on the stoop while helping neighbors secure street parking. His life is chronicled in “Nicky D from LIC: A Narrative Portrait,” a biography by writer and artist Warren Lehrer.
DeTommaso was granted power of attorney in 2007, two years before Nicky’s death. During his final years, she drove him to appointments and errands in cars he purchased for her, she told The Post in a 2018 interview.
“He loved me, and his whole family still calls me,” said DeTommaso last week.
But Narine remembers things differently, claiming Nicky seemed eager for Maria to leave almost immediately after she arrived. “He woke up early, and every morning I would hear him curse at her to get … out,” she said. “I’m next door and the walls are pretty thin.”
{Matzav.com}