Furious Queens homeowners are pitching a fit over a half-naked neighbor who’s living in a tent in his back yard.
Romanian immigrant Mircea Fersedy, 61, has lived in the cluttered tent since April, two months after the city officials tossed him out of his home on 37th Street in Astoria because they deemed it structurally unsafe.
“I paid a mortgage for 25 years,” said the former pharmacist. “Now I’m a beggar. I’m homeless. I lived in the subway and the airports for two months. Then I had the idea for a tent.”
The idea is not popular.
Angry neighbors claim Fersedy bathes in a stairwell using a hose, relieves himself in the yard, plays his radio all night and walks around half-nude.
They’re also concerned about electrical wires running into his tent, and his hot plate.
“It’s disgusting and it’s unsafe,” said Angela Mancuso, whose family has owned the two homes adjacent to Fersedy’s for decades. “It smells . . . I have two teenage nieces. What if he’s out there in his underwear?”
Neighbors are also incensed over the dilapidated state of the six-family home, which the city boarded up in February.
“Homeless people stroll in there,” said Mancuso. “There is human feces in the front stairwell. There’s garbage everywhere.”
But Fersedy, who uses a walker, makes no apologies.
“They tell despicable lies because they want my property . . . This is my home,” he said. “I pay my taxes. I’m not doing anything to anyone.”
Fersedy denied he showers or relieves himself in the yard — he said a “kind” neighbor lets him use his bathroom.
“I’m a civilized person,” said Fersedy, who has to jump a fence to get access to his yard and the tent. There he has a bed, a computer with the Internet, and a slew of boxes.
Fersedy is “frustrated” that the city shuttered his home.
“All they do is give me false violations,” said Fersedy, who has racked up $211,079 in Environmental Control Board violations in the last year. “I have no savings. I can’t pay for all this.”
Fersedy moved to the United States in 1979, but had to give up his pharmacy trade. He lived in the building with his parents, his wife and his children. The family rented the other apartments. But after his 1982 divorce, he said, he lost touch with his children and his parents died, leaving him alone. As the building fell into disrepair, tenants dried up.
Fersedy — who has diabetes and has had a stroke and heart attack in the last few years — has declined social services, saying, “I don’t need that kind of help. I need my rights back. I need to get into my home and fix it.”
He said he plans to live in the terminals at Kennedy Airport once it gets too cold for his tent.