Exclusive | Demon in human skin tenant uses every legal loophole to stay in $100-a-month Queens apartment: sources
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.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.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.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 Housin...