A famed Bowery flophouse is begging for mercy from one of its tenants.
The owners of the Whitehouse Hotel, which rents out beds in ceilingless cubicles for just $30 a night, say they’ve spent more than $200,000 on court cases from longtime permanent resident Roland Davis, and they can’t take it anymore.
Acting as his own lawyer, Davis has a “blind litigiousness” and sues “purely out of spite, ill will and in bad faith,” they charge in a lawsuit. They want a court order requiring Davis to get approval before filing any more lawsuits on his own.
He’s one of just nine rent-stabilized tenants left in the four-story hostel, which boasts shared bathroom facilities and windowless rooms smaller than jail cells.
Davis, who was arrested for assaulting former Whitehouse owner Meyer Muschel in 2009 and was barred from the property for a year after Muschel got an order of protection, has filed 23 lawsuits since then, including one that forced 40 percent of the hotel’s employees to show up in court, according to Whitehouse’s own court papers.
He also hasn’t paid his $8.32-a-night rent “in several years,” the owners claim. The longtime tenant slammed the would be legal maneuvering, and says the place is riddled with fire safety violations and bedbugs.
“That’s an outright lie,” he angrily told The Post. “It’s outrageous.”
Davis says the four-story building is riddled with problems, that the city routinely ignores his complaints, and that the owners just want to evict him. Muschel, who works for the current Whitehouse owners, says that’s not the case., “No one wants to hurt Mr. Davis. No one wants to have Mr. Davis evicted. We have nothing personal against [him]. We need peace in our own lives.”