Living Rent-Free on Manhattan's Upper East Side

Until last week, Joseph Cruz, 55, was living on New York City's posh Upper East Side. But while he paid no rent, perhaps he should have been charged some tolls. For Cruz had set up residence, complete with a salvaged bed, storage-crate furniture, a beer cooler and a stove made from an oil drum, smack in the middle of a 35-ft.-long traffic island on Manhattan's East River Drive. His presence immediately stopped a bit of traffic; passing motorists were enchanted by the sight of the eccentric tenant, protected from the elements only by the elevated southbound lanes overhead, and slowed down long enough to contribute food and beer. New enough to contribute food and beer. New York newspapers and TV stations showed a serene Cruz sitting back and reading a book while the world quite literally rushed by. But alarmed city officials sent a couple of psychiatrists to size him up and then a platoon of police to take him away for further tests. When social workers offered him lodging in one of the city's shelters for the homeless, Cruz sniffed: "The shelters are pigpens." Said one local newspaper columnist: "He must have been one of the sanest men in the city of New York to refuse to live in those places." But at week's end Cruz had been relocated to a room in Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ward to await legal proceedings about his fate.

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