• Mickey Barreto lived for free at the New Yorker Hotel for years before his recent arrest.
• Barreto faces 24 charges, including criminal fraud.
• Doctors found Barreto unfit for trial. A judge ordered him to undergo treatment.

Doctors say a man who has lived for free inside the iconic New Yorker Hotel for more than half a decade is unfit to stand trial.

Mickey Barreto lived for years at the New Yorker Hotel without paying a single cent rent. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said Barreto claimed ownership of the hotel building and even tried to collect rent from another tenant. In February, police charged Barreto with filing fraudulent property records.

Barreto now faces 24 charges, including 14 counts of fraud.

Over the summer, two doctors concluded that Barreto did not understand the criminal proceedings against him, and the court ordered him to undergo outpatient mental health and addiction treatment to see if his mental state would improve, The New York reported Times.

At a hearing Wednesday, New York City Criminal Court Judge Cori Weston said she was not satisfied with the rate of Barreto’s treatment and ordered him hospitalized, 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 plans to ask Barreto’s current treatment provider, the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai West, to accept him for inpatient care.

“We all agree that substance abuse leads to some of these other issues and makes it impossible to move forward with the case,” Hutchinson told the media.

Hutchinson and U.S. Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office did not immediately return requests for comment from Business Insider about Barreto’s mental evaluation.

Barreto has dismissed the accusation that he is a drug addict as a “partier” and said prosecutors want to hospitalize him because they don’t have a case against him, the Associated Press reported.

In June 2018, Barreto and his partner, Matthew Hannan, stayed one night in room 2565 at the New Yorker Hotel and paid $200.57.

Armed with knowledge of New York’s Rent Stabilization Code, which gives tenants the right to ask for a six-month lease on individual rooms built before 1969, Barreto asked the hotel for a lease the next day.

He was immediately evacuated. The following 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.

As no representative of the church appeared in court, the judge ruled in favor of Barreto, ordering the hotel to provide him with a key. With no agreed lease terms and unable to evict him, Barreto ended up living in the hotel rent-free.

But free rent at a flagship hotel wasn’t enough for Barreto.

Prosecutors said Barreto later registered the hotel in his name with the Department of Environmental Protection to take control of the bank accounts and demanded rent from a commercial tenant.

The Union 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, again claiming ownership of the building in 2023, the DA’s office finally got involved.

He faces several years behind bars if convicted, according to the Times.