The worst of New York City’s worlds have collided on one Brooklyn block – where junkie squatters rented out an abandoned home to migrants, whose dozens of apparently stolen bikes and scooters sparked an inferno that scorched two neighboring homes, The Post has learned.
But even the Aug. 17 conflagration couldn’t keep the squatters away from the East 36th Street abode in Marine Park.
“For the next two days, people were coming back again and again,” a 45-year-old neighbor told The Post, even after the city boarded up the second-floor windows and poured cement across the first-floor doors and windows.
Neighbors estimated around 10 junkies and an unknown number of migrant squatters frequented the dilapidated two-story, three-bedroom duplex, which was built in 1925.
“They were getting into fights with the neighbors and yelling, ‘This is our house! This is our house!’” one resident of the block recalled, adding that she called the police each time she saw them in the days following the blaze.
The two-alarm fire, which took 106 firefighters to douse and injured three smoke-eaters, was sparked by an exploding e-battery at about 1:30 p.m. Flames quickly spread to homes on either side, displacing at least six people.
The abandoned house has bedeviled the otherwise quiet block since 2011, when 81-year-old owner Mortimer Falk died with no surviving relatives. The Brooklyn Public Administrator is handling the estate and the property.
“It’s just been so many years of trying to get people, officials, to pay attention to this and no one ever has,” the 45-year-old neighbor lamented.
The home is valued at $729,300, according to Zillow.com. Calls to the public administrator were not returned.
The house has seen a revolving door of junkies and freeloaders, neighbors said.
“It’s been scary because sometimes I will get home at night alone, and there will be like four random men just sitting in their front yard, and I don’t know who they are,” a teenage girl who lives across the street told The Post.
“Migrants, they’re new to the scene ever since Floyd Bennet Field,” said a neighbor who requested anonymity out of fear for her safety, referring to the massive 2,000-bed shelter at the national park five miles away.
“You’ve got your original 10 crackheads and then they started to bring in migrants and they were charging them $600 a month to stay there. Where are they getting that? They’re robbing.”
Robbery is up 12% from 72 to 81 so far this year in the 63rd Precinct.
Moshe Kabasso, 32, and his wife, Luly, 27, have shared a wall with the squatter home since 2021 but had to leave with their three young children when the city slapped a vacate order on the property following the blaze.
“Ever since we moved in, there were people coming in and out – random people – and it’s gotten much worse over the past few months,” Kabasso said. “Every time my kids would see them, they would cry – just the appearance of them and how they spoke.”
One woman would yell “I need my s–t! I need my s–t!” referring to her drugs, he said.
He once heard a man banging on the door yelling, “Give me my money! I’m going to kill you!”
His wife saw the squatters smoking what appeared to be crack pipes on the porch many times, she said.
“We would hear them all hours of the night – from the moment we moved in – screaming fighting, really scary stuff,” she said.
Through Aug. 30 this year, 18 complaints have been made to the city’s 311 hotline about the squatter house, according to city data.
The NYPD has responded 15 times to the house in just the last two weeks, a spokesperson said — one for a burglary in progress, one for a larceny in progress, one about a disorderly group and 12 other times.
On Aug. 15, outside of the house, cops arrested three people who were sitting inside a vehicle that had been stolen in the area on July 25. All three individuals were charged with auto grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and possession of a controlled substance.
Cops arrested another vehicle thief at the address on Aug. 18, and charged him with auto grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
An NYPD spokesperson said that the 63rd Precinct’s Commanding Officer “has remained in contact with residents regarding complaints of trespassing at the location” and that the precinct has added more patrol on the block.
This week, The Post observed at least seven scooters and ebikes, broken glass, and charred clothing, propane tanks and wood littering the home’s alley and yard. A partly-burned mattress had somehow landed on the roof of an adjacent home, where windows were also boarded up because of the fire damage.
Video from inside the squatters’ home taken after the fire by a brave neighbor reveals a chaotic scene of disheveled beds and smashed furniture, names and phone numbers bizarrely scribbled on walls, and garbage strewn about.
Guardian Angels founder and Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa said the chaos could drive residents away.
“This is going to cause people to put up the for-sale signs and leave,” he said. “We can’t afford this.”
Residents continue to worry about the return of the squatting hordes.
“Our fear is that they will find their way back here,” said one neighbor.
Councilwoman Mercedes Narcisse said her office was contacted about “the ongoing and deeply troubling issue of squatters and drug activity” on the property for the first time on the day of the fire.
“More must be done to protect our neighborhoods from the dangers posed by neglected properties. I strongly support the need for stronger state laws that empower communities and homeowners to address the problem of squatting effectively,” she said.
A mayoral spokesperson said, “We are going to review laws surrounding squatting to protect homeowners in the city, particularly working-class New Yorkers, and we will look for ways to partner with the City Council to resolve this issue.”
