MINI RENT: Grimy piles of clothing and water bottles fill a locker that rents for up to $213 a month — a lot less than a studio. (Frank Rosario)
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A SoHo storage facility has turned into the Hobo Hilton.
The Manhattan Mini Storage on Spring Street is filled each night with a host of vagrants, loiterers and sleeping homeless — a veritable flophouse that echoes the worst of the old Bowery.
The Post witnessed at least a dozen men using the facility — where a 20-square-foot locker goes for $92 a month — as a crash pad over two random nights this month.
“I come here sometimes to clear my head,” said one Manhattan Mini Storage denizen named Eddie, who insisted he was not homeless but who was washing socks in the men’s restroom sink while his tattered clothes were draped over a toilet stall to dry.
“This is where I come to run away from my problems. It’s quiet,” said Eddie, who appeared to be in his 40s. “Security never comes to take me out if I spend the night. It’s not a problem as long as you stay quiet. I fall asleep sometimes, too. I have space for a pretty comfortable armchair in there.”
Legitimate patrons, however, are worried sick that their property is just a smashed lock away from disappearing.
“It’s like walking into a slum,” said Josip Matijevic, 32, a DJ who keeps about $40,000 worth of equipment at the facility. “There are a lot of bad vibes here. I see people without key cards walking in all the time. This is my career in here. I can’t afford to lose any of it.”
The facility is open 24/7 to accommodate people like Matijevic, who need places to store equipment after late-night gigs.
On the building’s eighth floor The Post spotted a man sleeping on the ground in front of an open storage unit. The cramped 5-foot by 5-foot unit — which rents from $106 to $213 a month — was filled with dirty clothes and water jugs. By contrast, the average rent for a non-doorman SoHo studio is $2,500.
A woman, who also may have had her own locker, was spotted sleeping in the unguarded lobby area. Another man was seen hauling a plastic grocery bag full of snacks, including a 2-liter bottle of Fresca and three small bags of Lay’s potato chips, to make his evening stay comfortable.
At about 2 a.m., a man in a dirty black T-shirt, sweat pants and grubby sneakers with hot-pink trim was spotted taking a two-hour nap inside a rented unit on the sixth floor before leaving and coming back and falling asleep again.
“I was taking a nap,” he said defensively, before claiming he “worked nearby.”
The storage facility’s rules specifically forbid renters from living in the building. But a sole security guard on duty was spotted doing nothing as the loiterers lounged.
When legitimate renters saw pictures of how the facility turns into a makeshift SRO after dark, they were dismayed.
“This is where I keep my valuables,” said Shauna Williams, 26, of Canarsie. “You don’t want homeless people to be around your belongings like that.”
Madeline Ames, 28, of Brooklyn keeps $50,000 worth of camera equipment in the facility.
“Security is practically nonexistent,” she said.
Manhattan Mini Storage’s general manager, Ylia A. Saldana, said there isn’t much the company can do.
“It’s hard to regulate the people who come in here 24 hours a day,” she said. “The problem is that some people tend to rent just so they’ll have a reason to be here. And eventually, they figure out more or less when we do our rounds and they take advantage of that.”
Additional reporting by Todd Venezia and Dan Macleod