A hobo living rent-free inside the Manhattan Bridge lost the city’s sweetest real estate deal on Thursday, when NYPD cops booted him from his fully stocked makeshift loft.
The Chinese immigrant known only as “Joe” had a shanty-studio featured a reading lamp, a gas heater and a “pantry” stocked with beer and cookies — but police feared the dwelling could collapse onto the bike lane.
“Police department! Police department!” a team of cops yelled while knocking on the shelter at around 9:50 a.m.
Nobody replied, so officers sawed through the tree-house-style pad, which was built into the bridge’s frame and featured a stove, shelves and kitchen essentials like distilled vinegar, iodized salt and Siracha sauce.
Cops soon spotted the clean-cut Joe inside, wearing white pajamas and a goofy grin.
They allowed him to change into clothes before evicting him.
“That’s amazing! I didn’t think he was in there. When I saw his legs pop out I was like ‘Oh s–t!’” one cop said after the bridge dweller used a ladder to climb down from the shanty.
Joe, a neatly dressed man in his 40s , wasn’t injured by the saw, a senior officer said.
“He’s fine. He’s fine. He didn’t answer. No one got hurt, thank God,” the high-ranking cop said.
Another officer cracked, “It was like the magic trick where they cut you in two. And he came out in one piece.
The coffin-sized crash pad was fully insulated with Styrofoam. It was rigged with a yellow tarp and a Bungee cord for a “ceiling.”
“He’s got five inches thick of Styrofoam in there. It was quite a set-up. He had a portable butane stove hooked up to a butane tank … safe for indoors. That’s a good way to keep warm,” one cop said.
Inside, officers also found two full cans of Bud Light, scissors and keys.
His home may have been cozy — but it was not quiet.
“I can’t imagine sleeping above the subway. Can you imagine how cold these beams get in the winter?” one cop said.
Roughly a dozen officers from the 84th and 5th precincts plus four Emergency Service Unit cops launched the raid along with a DOT worker.
A DOT staffer first used bolt cutters to remove a red bicycle lock, which Joe used to secure his front door.
He was lucky workers took their time, said an ESU officer who was spooked by the close call with the saw.
“That was freaky. That’s why you gotta go slow,” he said
While removing the shelter, cops stopped cyclists at the Manhattan entrance — creating a bike traffic jam at around 10:20 a.m.
They said they were “removing debris and don’t want it to fall on your heads,” said cyclist Greg Addo said.
Police now plan to help Joe find a safer place to live.
“We’ll voucher all of his property. We’d like to help him get back on his feet,” one cop said.
“We are here to do anything we can to help a man down on his luck get back on his feet. It’s a sad story.”
The DOT, which maintains the bridge, called the cops for help dismantling the shelter after reading about the set-up in The Post, a worker from the agency said.
Two elaborate shanties had been built into the bridge — and the second one was also dismantled on Thursday. It’s unclear what happened to that resident.
Joe was first discovered by a cyclist, who spotted him climbing to his pad on a chain-link fence and thought he was a jumper.
Joe used to live in a shanty on a grassy patch, near the bike lane on-ramp on the Manhattan-side of the bride, he told the Post.
But over the past 13 years, the NYPD tore down those quarters, prompting him to get more creative, he said.
“Five times they take down. Five times!” Joe said.
His bridge abode was lodged in a crevice above the bike path and subway tracks, below cars on the span’s upper deck about 150 feet east of the bridge’s Manhattan entrance side.
To get to his home, Joe would unlock his front door, which was secured with a bike lock, slide back a piece of plywood and crawl inside.
He fortified his abode with discarded wood he found in nearby Chinatown.
Debris from his home filled the bed of a truck, which hauled it away on Thursday.
Additional reporting by Bob Fredericks.