For many people, owning rental properties is a way to have largely passive income that they use to save for retirement, put their kids through college, or supplement their income to pay bills, afford vacations, and other things. Yes, there are bad landlords. This writer used to work for the City of Milwaukee, in the department that dealt with landlord-tenant issues, so she's seen it firsthand.
But there are also good landlords who get cheated by bad tenants, and it seems laws make it difficult, if not impossible, for those landlords to get any sort of justice. In New York City, one such landlord has been fighting a decade-long battle against a tenant who now owes him more than $300,000 in back rent.
A Brooklyn landlord says he's trapped in a legal battle with a '9-year-squatter' over unpaid rent — and it's already drained his daughter's college fund. Thomas Diana estimates he's owed up to $325,000 while New York courts keep adjourning the case. The saga now stretches into… pic.twitter.com/kbe6szJ0Eg
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) June 1, 2026
Thomas Diana, who owns a small eight-unit building in Park Slope, told Fox News Digital he has spent the last nine years trying to remove a woman who originally moved into one of his apartments as a live-in companion for an elderly, disabled tenant.
Court records show the woman moved into the apartment in 2014 after responding to a Craigslist advertisement seeking a live-in companion for the tenant, who later died in 2016.
What followed was nearly a decade of litigation spanning multiple courts and proceedings. After the elderly tenant's death, disputes arose over the woman's tenancy status, rent obligations and whether the apartment remained subject to New York rent-stabilization laws as Diana sought unpaid rent and possession of the apartment.
...
Court stipulations required the occupant to make monthly use-and-occupancy payments, similar to interim rent payments, of roughly $835 per month at one point, but Diana says those payments stopped years ago. He estimates total unpaid rent now ranges between $275,000 and $325,000.
In her deposition, the occupant testified she has not worked full time in years and has limited income, a factor Diana says the courts have effectively allowed to justify continued nonpayment.
Despite not working full-time 'in years,' lawyers for the tenant claim she's got rent set aside in an escrow account.
Skip to the end: the city is going to take his property.
— J.W. de Nashville (@C130GuyBNA) June 1, 2026
It's only a matter of time before the Mamdani administration does that. We're all thinking it, and we all know what's going to happen.
It all shakes out on the side of these pieces of s**t. Never the folks doing it the right way.
— NWK+ (@25GoDawgs) June 1, 2026
The system doesn't work for those who do things the right way.
Mamdani victim Thomas Diana is not a fat cat landlord.
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) June 1, 2026
He's a construction worker from Queens who toiled hard all his life and planned to retire on the proceeds of a run down 8-unit building that he fixed up himself at night over years.
He always took care of his tenants and… https://t.co/OMvtt1cfnQ
"He always took care of his tenants and now he's being taken for a ride by a 9-year squatter, NYC is treating him like the bad guy," Devine wrote. She also covered Diana's saga last week.
I've represented small single-family landlords who haven't collected rent in four years and are still expected to pay mortgages, taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance, and violations. Not because they're slumlords, quite the opposite. These small units represent their dreams and… https://t.co/ctPPft1A1x
— J.C. Polanco, Esq. (@JCPolancoNYC) June 1, 2026
"These small units represent their dreams and savings. The courts allow endless adjournments while some tenants game the system. The landlord is on the brink of bankruptcy and foreclosure on their own homes due to scrupulous, bad-faith tenants. The taxpayer funds the tenant's lawyer. The system is badly out of balance," Palanco wrote.
We're at the stage of Communist Tactics of Taking;
— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) June 1, 2026
Make rules and regulations impossible to follow:
Democrats give squatters rights, impose rent control then demand landlords obey their mandates or lose property. https://t.co/VOZKzdZ4WA
That's exactly what will happen here. The Mamdani administration will use this legal battle to claim Diana is a slumlord and they'll hand his property to a nonprofit.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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