The 63-year-old Brooklyn native not only has cancer, and not only has been homeless for more than two years, but now his car --  in which he was living -- was repossessed, and, he says, he was beaten up by agents of the towing company when he argued with them.

He’s suing Gaddid Towing on Foster Avenue, Crossland Group of Suffolk County that handled the repossession order, and HSBC bank, which had issued the car loan.

Manhattan Attorney Joseph Palmiotto said he agreed to take the case on contingency (he is not charging Wecker but will get a percentage of any court award or settlement) because Wecker is “a very nice guy, and has really been victimized. They repossessed his home.”

Mangers of Gaddid Towing and lawyers for Crossland and for HSBC did not return calls for comment.

Wecker says the towing agents confronted him at his car, and that when he told them the payments were supposed to have been made by an insurance company handling his disability claims and that they had no right to take the car, they started hitting him and throwing him against the vehicle. “He suffered injuries to his head,” Palmiotto said.

The light-gold 2004 Buick LaSabre is now sitting in an auction yard in New Jersey, and Wecker is in a local hospital being treated for stomach pains and other conditions. He’s scheduled to be given rehabilitation in a few days, but he doesn’t think he’ll have the time needed for effective rehab. “I have to try to get my car back and try to find an apartment,” he said.

He’s been staying at a friend’s apartment in Sheepshead Bay, but it’s very short-term. He doesn’t know how much longer his friend is able to keep him there, and in any case, he has trouble climbing the stairs to the apartment.

Wecker, who grew up in the Bay area, had worked as a payroll accountant for 15 years. He was laid off in 1993; he says he couldn’t look for another job because he had to take care of his ailing mother. When she died the next year, he moved to Florida where he thought he would have a new apartment (he could no longer afford to stay in his mother’s apartment where he had lived since he was 6) and better job opportunities, but a series of misfortunes befell him there, too – including being diagnosed with non-Hodgkinson’s lymphoma -- and he made his way back to New York in 2000. He stayed for a while at a Staten Island hotel as he looked for work.

"As soon as they found out I had cancer, no one would hire me,” he said. “I couldn’t lie about it.”

For the past two years he had been living in his Buick, having his disability checks sent to his old apartment building and picked up by his former neighbor. He’d been a regular visitor to the Council Senior Center on Quentin Road and East 10th Street, where he was able to get a hot lunch for a dollar and take a respite from living in his car.

Wecker doesn’t know how long he can depend on the kindness of his friend, or if he’ll ever be able to get his car and its contents back.

"I just have to take things day by day,” he said. “I have to keep fighting.”