Being a landlord in New York City can be far more difficult than most people realize.
Take the case of Tom Diana, a 58-year-old who owns an eight-unit building in Brooklyn’s picturesque Park Slope neighborhood. One unit in that building has become a never-ending nightmare: it's been occupied by a tenant who hasn’t paid rent in years—and refuses to leave.
The story started off rather simply. Back in 2016, a disabled elderly tenant passed away. His live-in companion, who was supposedly there just to provide care, stayed behind—and made no effort to vacate the apartment.
“She just decided she wasn’t leaving,” Tom recalls, still sounding baffled.
At first, he assumed this was just a temporary hiccup. After all, tenants come and go. He took legal steps right away. But from January 2019 onwards, the woman stopped paying rent entirely. Today, she owes more than $250,000 in back rent.
Even more shocking: despite numerous court hearings and legal filings, she’s still living there—eight years later.
Tom has tried everything: hiring attorneys, filing court motions, even appealing to local politicians. Yet he keeps running into the same wall.
“She’s switched lawyers multiple times, and every time we go to court, there’s some new excuse,” he says. “COVID delayed everything. Then it was scheduling issues, missing documents. We’ve lost at least five years to this nonsense.”
To make things worse, New York law offers very little practical support to landlords in this situation. The police won’t intervene, because this is a civil dispute. And landlords can’t legally change locks or forcibly remove tenants.
Tom once joined a group of landlords to visit their state senator for help. The senator’s response? “Most tenants pay their rent. This is a court matter—we won’t get involved.”
Complicating matters further, the woman is not considered a true “squatter.” Because she once had legal tenancy, she now enjoys far more protection under New York’s tenant-friendly laws.
Attorney Maria Beltrani explains: “She’s technically a month-to-month tenant, and that comes with extensive legal rights. If the unit is also subject to rent stabilization—and it may be—that could slow things down even more.”
The woman’s legal team has argued that the apartment was unlawfully removed from rent regulation protections. That dispute alone has been dragging through the courts since 2017.
Sadly, Tom’s case is not unusual. Across New York City, stories like his are becoming alarmingly common. According to Newsweek, New York has the most lenient “squatter rights” laws in the entire United States. Between 2022 and 2024, reported squatter incidents rose by as much as 20%.
And it’s not just a New York problem. In Los Angeles, Lisa Anderson, a single mother of two, found herself in a nearly identical situation. One of her tenants hadn’t paid rent in over three years—and legally, she couldn’t remove him. “Meanwhile, I was working two jobs and covering the mortgage myself,” she said in an interview. “The system is broken.”
Many believe the root of the issue lies in the pandemic-era eviction protections, which were designed to prevent mass homelessness but have since been manipulated by opportunistic renters. Some have even become what critics call “professional tenants,” using legal loopholes to avoid paying rent for years.
Tom says the ordeal has already cost him over $40,000 in legal fees. His retirement savings are gone, his child’s college fund depleted, and he’s losing $4,000 a month on that one unit alone.
Last year, New York lawmakers introduced two bills aimed at addressing the squatting crisis. One proposed quarterly reports on illegal occupancy. The other suggested forming an interagency task force to address squatting, assist squatters with relocation, and hold absentee landlords accountable.
But real estate advocates remain skeptical. Property rights attorney Tevis Verrett called the bills “window dressing.” One, he says, is just paperwork. The other “paints the squatter as the victim.”
“The small landlord is under siege,” Verrett warns. “And the state seems more concerned about optics than action.”
Tom agrees. “In this city, squatters have more rights than landlords,” he says flatly. “That’s the bottom line.”
Does he think his case will ever reach a conclusion?
“No,” he says without hesitation. “The next court date isn’t until October. Then there’ll be more delays, more appeals. This should’ve been resolved years ago—but I honestly don’t see an end in sight.”
His story reads like something out of a legal thriller, but it’s just another day in the life of a New York landlord. For many, property ownership is no longer a path to stability or generational wealth—it’s a legal battle with no end, where the owner has the deed, but none of the control.