This isn’t what you expect to see on the streets of tony Park Slope.
A wacky woman has been sleeping on the stoop of her crumbling townhouse since getting locked out by city officials last month, neighbors say.
Joan Turken, 75, was ordered to vacate her four-floor row house in the affluent neighborhood’s historic district after a partial collapse of the interior, records show.
But rather than seek new digs, Turken has been disappearing during the day, only to return after dark and bed down on the steps, amid a jumble of cardboard boxes, foam packing material and plastic tarps.
“It’s awful. She really needs help,” lamented neighbor Julie Markes, 50, a children’s book author and photographer.
Markes noted that the city’s Adult Protective Services program has been trying to work with Turken for more than a year, but she refuses all assistance and is currently on her fourth case worker.
“Last night, until 10 o’clock, the guy from Protective Services was here and she was yelling at him, ‘I’m going to sue the city!’” Markes said.
Turken’s son, Westchester lawyer Jason Turken, said he was largely estranged from his mom, who he said has been suffering from untreated mental illness for more than 30 years.
“I don’t how to describe it. It’s a mental-health, civil-rights, personal, family, human problem from hell,” he said.