25+ Year Squatters In Abandoned NYC Building Score Big Win; Obtain Title To Manhattan Apartment House As Co-Op

In New York City, the New York Post reports:

• Sometimes crime does pay. Nearly 30 years after an eclectic group of poets, performers, anarchists and artists illegally occupied a burned-out East Village tenement, they've officially become a Manhattan co-op.

• Last Monday, the group signed off on the final paperwork allowing them to legally call their one-bedroom apartments home. They're now owners of the Bullet Space building -- named after the art gallery and community space on its ground floor. The cleaned-up, five-story cooperative at 292 E. Third St. is a far cry from the rat-infested hellhole into which they first moved in the 1980s as squatters. Back then it was so derelict, its owners chose to walk away rather than pay taxes. Now the city says it's worth $2.2 million, and real-estate experts estimate its market value between $4 million and $5 million.

For more, see SPACE INVADERS PAY DIDDLY SQUAT (CITY HANDS $5M BLDG. TO '80S ARTS CREW).