A Queens woman does her damage from a third-floor apartment with an ocean view: Water left running for days, flooding the building. Smoke pouring from beneath her front door. Hoarding old junk in the hallway, from bicycles to shopping carts. Taking a sledgehammer to her kitchen cabinets.
But her exasperated Rockaway landlord and unnerved neighbors can’t get help from anywhere. Not from the cops. Not from the fire department. And not from a housing court crippled by the pandemic.
“I’m trying to evict her because she’s a nuisance and the courts are supposedly open for business,” said building owner Martin Hanan, who is out roughly $40,000 in lost rent. “But apparently they’re not, because they really don’t care. They don’t want to hear a word ... Honestly, I gave up on calling the city.”
Hanan compiled a staggering six-page litany of Annamarie Hosang’s behavior, from allegedly tossing a fire extinguisher at the building superintendent to once blasting music from her apartment for 20 straight hours.
A Daily News review of Housing Court documents detailed the woman’s alleged activities, with multiple reports of flooding the building, ringing her neighbor’s doorbells and even threatening one of her neighbors with a pipe.
When the NYPD and FDNY arrived on multiple occasions, they dealt with the situation and moved on, the landlord said, adding his tenants declined to bring charges against the woman over fear of reprisals.
Hanan is still awaiting a long-delayed hearing for her eviction, a process that began in Queens Housing Court in September 2020. Things became even more complicated after Hosang twice applied — in October 2021 and this past February — for a COVID relief program that assures her a home during the pandemic.
Hanan says Hosang has paid no rent for her $1,725-a-month residence since April 2021 and that he can’t even lease out the apartment downstairs because the cascading water from above collapsed its ceiling. The stench of mildew from her water-soaked apartment seeps through the building.
Two long-time residents of the nine-unit building shared their own tales, with both asking for anonymity rather than risk incurring their neighbor’s wrath. One of the pair, referring to Hosang only as “the squatter,” recited a list of unnerving incidents — including one where she chased his wife with a shovel.
“It got to the point where she was following me to my job site, where I was working,” the man recounted. “I run out of things to say, she’s done so much since she’s been there. She’s caused so many fights in the building.”
A second neighbor recounted the night when the 64-year-old woman decided to make dinner and lit a barbecue grill inside her apartment, sending smoke billowing down the hallway.
The first tenant confirmed the repeated visits by police and firefighters, all to no avail. Efforts to obtain a record of calls to the building were unsuccessful.
“I believe everybody should have a roof over their head,” said the second neighbor. “But damn. The moment you say something to her, she gets really nasty.”
When The News visited the building, a reporter knocked repeatedly on the woman’s door with no response. A message left at the apartment with a phone number was never returned, and attempts to find any contact information for Hosang were unsuccessful.
Hanan recalled better days, before the man who moved in with Hosang back in February 2020 bailed out and left her behind.
“The second I talk to her, she just starts screaming,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to be this rough. I went out for dinner with a friend for my birthday and I got a few calls from my tenants: ‘The water is pouring down like Niagara Falls.’
“I can’t (even) have dinner on my birthday.”
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