Tenant in $100-per-month apartment: I'm never leaving

Maria DeTommaso had little idea her life would change forever when she knocked on the door of a Long Island City building to watch a friend’s cat in 1993.

That’s when the twice-married yoga enthusiast became friends with Nicholas DeTommaso, a colorful retired dock worker who often cooked Italian meals for his neighbors in his rent-controlled railroad flat on the first floor of a dilapidated six-unit town house.

“I was living upstairs, and one day around Easter, he called me for breakfast,” DeTommaso told The Post. “He had decorated the apartment, and he made french fries and eggs.”

Maria, who was then known as Prema Deodhar, lingered over the meal, enchanted with the man everyone called “Nicky D” and “Uncle Nicky.” She never left.

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