- Mickey Barreto lived in the New Yorker Hotel for free for years before his recent arrest.
- Barreto faces 24 charges, including felony fraud.
Doctors say a man who had lived inside the iconic New Yorker Hotel for free for more than half a decade is unfit to stand trial.
Mickey Barreto lived in the New Yorker Hotel for years without paying a single cent in rent. The Manhattan District Attorney's office said Barreto claimed ownership of the hotel building and even attempted to charge rent to another tenant. In February, police charged Barreto with filing fraudulent property records.
Barreto now faces 24 charges, including 14 felony fraud counts.
Over the summer, two doctors concluded that Barreto did not understand the criminal proceedings against him, and the court ordered him into outpatient mental health and addiction treatment to see if his mental condition would improve, The New York Times reported.
At a hearing on Wednesday, New York City Criminal Court Judge Cori Weston said she was unsatisfied with the rate of Barreto's treatment and ordered him into inpatient care, according to the Times. Weston gave Barreto until November 13 to find a suitable facility. His next court appearance is scheduled for the same date, court records show.
Brian Hutchinson, an attorney for Barreto, told the Times that he planned to ask Barreto's current treatment provider, the Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai West, to accept him for inpatient care.
"We're all sort of in agreement that the substance abuse is leading to some of these other problems and making it impossible to move forward with the case," Hutchinson told the outlet.
Hutchinson and District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office did not immediately return requests for comment from Business Insider about Barreto's mental evaluation.
Barreto dismissed the allegation that he is addicted to drugs as "partying" and said that prosecutors want to hospitalize him because they do not have a case against him, The Associated Press reported.
In June 2018, Barreto and his partner, Matthew Hannan, stayed in room 2565 at the New Yorker Hotel for one night and paid $200.57.
Armed with knowledge of New York City's Rent Stabilization Code, which grants tenants the right to request a six-month lease for individual rooms constructed before 1969, Barreto asked the hotel for a lease the next day.
He was promptly evicted. The next month, Barreto filed a lawsuit in housing court against the building's owner, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity — which had purchased the hotel in 1976 — saying he was illegally evicted.
Since no representative from the church appeared in court, the judge ruled in Barreto's favor, ordering the hotel to provide him with a key. With no agreed-upon lease terms and unable to evict him, Barreto ended up living in the hotel rent-free.
But free rent at an iconic hotel wasn't enough for Barreto.
The District Attorney's office said Barreto later registered the hotel in his name with the Department of Environmental Protection to take control of its bank accounts and demanded rent from a commercial tenant.
The Unification Church filed a lawsuit in response. Although a judge ordered him to stop representing himself as the owner of the hotel, Barreto continued to live there for free.
When Barreto filed papers with the city claiming ownership of the building again in 2023, the District Attorney's office finally got involved.
He faces several years behind bars if convicted, according to the Times.