Space invader

It’s harder to acquire a hotel than a house. However, one scheming American man easily became the owner of the iconic New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan without buying it.

Mickey Barreto, 48, booked a one-night stay at the luxury hotel in 2018 and left his belongings there when it was time to check out. This prompted the hotel to remove his belongings and ask him to leave.

Barreto sued the hotel for wrongful eviction and invoked New York’s rent stabilization law to lease the room. Fox News reported that a judge sided with him and ordered the hotel to let him live in the room, which he did for free for five years.

In May 2019, Barreto filed a fake deed of transfer for the entire hotel through the city’s automated information system and began publicly posing as its new owner, according to Fox.

Barreto then demanded that the building’s real owner, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, leave the building and forward the tenants’ rent payments to him. He also reportedly registered the NYH under his own name with the city’s water and sewer agencies and tried to take over its bank accounts.

The Holy Spirit Association sued Barreto in October 2019 and won back the building, prosecutors said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said Barreto was charged with felony for offering a false instrument for filing and criminal contempt for plotting to take over the NYH, to which he pleaded not guilty on 14 February. The court will hear the case on 1 May.

Meanwhile, in Batangas City, Rufino Evangelista simply squatted on a public property in 2012 and still lives there with his new family.

The semi-furnished cave is small and humid, but according to history professor Abvic Ryan Maghirang, it has historical significance. It was an outpost of Imperial Japanese troops during World War 2.

The surroundings served as a passageway between the city and the Calumpang River when there was no road yet.

However, city engineer Dwight Arellano said the cave is inappropriate for use as a dwelling, GMA Regional TV Balitang Southern Tagalog reported.

Arellano reasoned that it had no windows for ventilation, a water supply, and electricity.

Evangelista admitted that his child should not grow up there, but until his appeal to be relocated is attended to, he and his family will have to live in the stone house.