Metro

Ire at home ‘free’ tenant

Natalie Bryant

Natalie Bryant

The rent is too damn late!

Queens landlord Debra Samuels says her only tenant hasn’t paid the $1,590 rent in more than a year — putting her two-family home in jeopardy.

“We haven’t received a penny since February 2011 and she’s upstairs chilling, living free.” Samuels said. “I don’t see any resolution to this thing.”

The cash crunch has put Samuels and her husband, who run a restaurant together, behind on their mortgage for the two-family Far Rockaway home.

“We have a small child and another one on the way, so we are not just some slumlords trying to kick an innocent person out,” she said.

Samuels was to receive $1,201 a month from the city’s Section 8 housing assistance program toward tenant Natalie Bryant’s rent. Bryant, who lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her two children, was responsible for $389 a month.

Samuels said she got a notice from the city in February 2011 that Bryant was kicked out of the Section 8 program because the tenant did not do her annual recertification.

Samuels, in order to reclaim her property, filed a case against Bryant in Housing Court only to find out in November that she had brought the wrong kind of case.

She hired a lawyer and started eviction proceedings. During a court date last month, Bryant signed an agreement to leave on April 30, but then ripped it up when she was before the judge, Samuels said. The next court date is in May.

Bryant, whose lease expired in February, refused to comment, hanging up on a reporter.