Exclusive | Chelsea tenant forced to wear helmet in bathroom as building crumbles: Our lives are miserable

When it rains, it pours inside the apartments of a crumbling Chelsea building — forcing one resident to wear a helmet in his bathroom to prevent parts of the ceiling from hitting him.“Our lives are miserable — we live in danger,” said longtime tenant Waleed Said to The Post, describing how he would put on a bike helmet for years when he entered his bathroom.“I could have died because of the ceiling collapsing on my head.”Said and other residents of 136 W.

28th St.in the typically tony Manhattan neighborhood claim their New Jersey-based landlord, Frank Ng, has purposefully let the property decay to a “dangerous” state that has left them fearful for their lives with constant leaks, floods, collapsed ceilings, heat outages — and for six months this year, no water.Five of the tenants have stuck out a multiyear courtroom odyssey to sue Ng for letting the building decay to such a degree that it has racked up 325 housing violations in the past two years alone and he has been forced to pay city agencies more than $130,000 for repairs, fees, violations and settlements.They may soon get some relief when a city housing-court judge rules whether Ng is in contempt of orders to make repairs or face more steep penalties.The tenants’ suit claims that the neglect amounts to harassment and is intentional — to drive out longtime residents.Said, who was a lawyer in his native Egypt, keeps meticulous notes on his landlord’s actions — and alleged inactions — in an accordion-style folder.“He’s not doing repairs, he’s not following court orders,” Said, 55, told The Post.

“And he’s getting away with it.… It’s really a nightmare.”Fernado Garotti, a flight attendant and resident at the building for more than 25 years, said the previous landlord was always reasonable with repairs. But since Ng bought the property for $14 million as part of a three-lot deal in 2007 — with the other two sites now developed with towering mid-block hotels — he...