Exclusive | NYC tenants beg for help as splashy squatter and band of naked vagrants terrorize housing project

He might look like a clown, but he’s no laughing matter to the beleaguered tenants of a NYCHA building in Chelsea.A vagabond decked out in a kaleidoscopic wardrobe and head scarves has set up camp in a city apartment building where the unhinged squatter and his band of homeless friends have terrorized tenants for more than two years.Despite daily complaints about the dangerous situation, tenants said the city seems powerless to remove the man who has laid claim to an apartment to which he has no legal right.The squatter, named in court documents as Stuart Newman and described as an aggressive man in his 40s, moved in when the former occupant, 77-year-old Harvey Wasserman, died in June 2024, according to a lawsuit filed by the New York City Housing Authority that November.Since then, he’s refused to leave the Robert Fulton Houses, despite being taken to court and repeated visits from the NYPD.He was photographed by tenants, emerging from the top of the staircase looking like a deranged parrot, wearing a pastel-colored tropical bird shirt and a makeshift towel turban with dangling multicolored strips of fabric.Tenants say he brings in a group of vagrants every night, who regularly attack each other and the residents, shoot drugs, strut around naked and set up furniture in the staircases, hallways and balconies.“The police have dragged them out of there, they come right back.It’s beyond crazy,” the head of the tenant association Miguel Acevedo told The Post.

“I think it’s easier to evict a tenant who owes back rent than this squatter.”Tenants say the squatter’s homeless pals have tried to take over the top five floors of the 25-floor building, run by the New York City Housing Authority on West 17th Street.“They piss on my floor, they s–t on my floor,” said Gladys Gonzalez, who lives on the 21st floor, one floor above the squat.“I get that they’re homeless, but it’s not just the squatting, it’s the drugs, it’s the pissing, it the s–t...