A man who has used a Hunter College dorm room as his home away from home for nearly 40 years will finally getting the boot if the university gets its way.
According to a lawsuit filed by the school, Derek DeFreitas has ‘maintained a dormitory room ‘crash pad’ at the Brookdale Residence Hall on East 25th Street and First Avenue’ since 1980,’ despite owning a home in Orange County.
The building, once a part of the Bellevue School of Nursing, is now under the control of The City University of New York, of which Hunter is a constituent college, according to The New York Post.
According to a lawsuit filed by Hunter College, Derek DeFreitas has maintained a dormitory room ‘crash pad’ at the Brookdale Residence (Pictured) since 1980
‘DeFreitas refuses to leave his dormitory originally provided to him and other under a long-discontinued program dating to the 1960s that reserved a certain number of rooms for active Bellevue nurses,’ the suit claims.
DeFreitas, an attorney himself, received eviction notice in August on the 100 square- foot dormitory which runs him $694 a month in rent.
The 67-year-old, however, claims to have ‘contractual right to stay in his dorm room indefinitely.’
DeFreitas said he kept the dorm room as a second living facility because his commute to upstate New York takes three hours, according to his lawyer Eric Sherman (pictured)
The school says that students living in the dorm ‘are forced to share common areas and bathroom facilities with DeFreitas,’ who refuses to make way for incoming pupils ‘awaiting housing, thus depriving them of much-needed space.’
According to the lawsuit, Hunter claims the right to terminate DeFreitas’ month-to-month occupancy agreement with just 30 days notice, the Post reports, and have asked a judge to issue an order directing law enforcement to eject him from the room.
DeFreitas claims, however, that he recently moved out from the small room and retired from his job.
‘Hunter made me feel terrible when I had to leave. I wouldn’t have retired if I could have stayed,’ DeFreitas’ lawyer, Eric Sherman, states in the lawsuit.
DeFreitas said he kept the dorm room as a second living facility because his commute to upstate New York takes three hours.
‘I looked into what it would cost to rent an apartment and it would cost me $3,500 when I only paid a few hundred,’ he explained.