public housing

Authorities in the city's Department of Investigation said Donna Quinter, 54, illegally received $136,866 in government rental subsidies for an apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The subsidies were supposed to go to middle-income families who were in danger of being forced out of a rent-regulated apartment building that was being converted into luxury condominiums.

Investigators say Quinter failed to disclose that she was sharing the apartment with a friend who paid rent. The home also wasn't her only residence. Since marrying Dolenz in 2002, the former flight attendant has lived with her husband in Bell Canyon, California, an exclusive gated community outside Los Angeles.

Quinter surrendered to authorities in New York on Friday morning, then resolved the case in a matter of hours. She wrote out a check to the city for the full $136,866, went before a judge in Manhattan and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor larceny charge, then received her sentence: five days of community service .

Her lawyer, Bridget Rohde, didn't return phone and e-mail messages Friday.

New York City has a number of programs designed to allow middle class families to pay reduced rents in homes they have occupied for a long period of time.

'Cheaters'
Fraud, however, is common. In some cases, people hold on to their apartments even after they have moved out of the city, either using them as vacation homes or secretly renting them out.

The Department of Investigation, a city law enforcement agency that probes fraud and other abuses in government programs and agencies, discovered Quinter's eligibility problems after it began examining who was getting subsidies in her building in 2008.

"Law abiding New Yorkers struggling to pay their rents and mortgages cannot afford to subsidize cheaters who abuse public housing resources to support privileged lifestyles," the department's commissioner, Rose Gill Hearn, said in a written statement.

Dolenz wasn't accused of any wrongdoing.