Five years ago, with Parkinson’s disease making it tough to walk, Jonathan Steinberg received a disabled parking permit from the city.

Despite the permit — which lets people disregard alternate-side parking rules — the city claims he owes thousands of dollars for unpaid parking tickets.

Steinberg, 71, has spent nearly two years fighting the tickets. Meanwhile, the city has confiscated and auctioned off his car.

With no good way to travel, “I don’t get around,” he said with dismay. “I stay home a lot.”

The city’s bureaucrats, he said, are “picking on disabled people” and “taunting people with Parkinson’s.”

The city claims the permit has expired — but the Department of Transportation’s own website says that a pandemic-related extension for expired disabled parking permits is in effect until Nov. 1, 2023.

Steinberg has been trying to renew his permit but pandemic-related red tape created unsurmountable obstacles, according to a lawsuit he filed against the Department of Finance.

The city’s disabled parking permits are issued to people with “a severe, permanent disability that impairs mobility” and who can’t readily use public transportation. These motorists can avoid alternate-side parking rules, park for free in metered spots and park in many “no parking” spots.

Steinberg, a UK barrister and an expert on vintage fountain pens, walks unsteadily with a “festinating gait” — short, shuffling steps that pitch him forward. He also has spinal stenosis, which causes back pain while standing but not while sitting.

Parkinson’s, a movement disorder, gained widespread attention when actor Michael J. Fox revealed his diagnosis 25 years ago.

“Parkinson’s patients have enormous difficulty maintaining balance on a steady floor,” said Dr. Michael Kaplitt, a Parkinson’s expert and neurological surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine — and maneuvering on a lurching bus or subway can quickly turn treacherous.

Navigating subway stairs is dangerous, too, said Kaplitt, who is not involved with Steinberg’s care. Unable to grab railings or dodge crowds, “patients can fall and hit their head,” he said. “They can be severely injured by these otherwise normal activities.”

Steinberg lives with his wife, Nancie, in a Yorkville co-op. He is still able to drive safely. “Balance isn’t something you need when you’re driving because you’re sitting down,” he said.

His parking woes started during the pandemic, when his permit, valid for two years, came up for renewal.

At around the same time, his car, while stationary, was totaled by a hit-and-run driver, he says. So he got a different car with a different license plate — registered in his wife’s name — which necessitated a new permit application.

A disabled parking permit must correspond to a car’s license plate.

Meanwhile, he was issued a two-month temporary permit.

He received conflicting information from phone reps when he called, he says, with confusion between a permanent license-plate change and a temporary plate change, as when a rental car is used. And reduced in-office staffing during the pandemic delayed his new permit.

A telephone recording from the Department of Transportation said that expired permits were automatically extended, Steinberg wrote in court papers. The extension is also currently noted on the phone message at the DOT’s customer service number and on the DOT website.

Regardless, Steinberg has been issued ticket after ticket, even as he displayed the expired temporary permit on the dashboard, with a note saying “permanent plate change applied for.”

Assorted documents filed by city lawyers say that the permit was expired, and also that the permit didn’t match the license plate. Because court documents were signed by Steinberg and not his wife, his petition was “procedurally defective and a nullity,” one of the city’s lawyers wrote.

“As this is ongoing litigation, we cannot comment further at this time,” according to a Department of Finance spokesman. Reps from the city’s Law and Transportation departments also refused to comment further.

“They can make your life absolute misery while you’re dying of Parkinson’s,” Steinberg said. “The city extended the permits but didn’t tell their parking attendants.”

Late last fall, a city marshal booted the car. The Steinbergs paid $1,120 in fines to have the boot removed, but more tickets were issued and it was re-booted, towed and auctioned off.

“At all times I had a valid permit application in process or I had been given incorrect information by the department responsible for issue of permits,” Steinberg wrote. His car was towed “for non-payment of tickets which we didn’t actually owe.” He said that the city caused the problem “and then exacerbated it out of all proportion.”

Steinberg was approved last April for a two-year permit, according to a spokesperson from the Department of Health, which has doctors review the medical paperwork for a “permanent disability seriously impairing mobility.” But now he has no car.

Last year, 8,286 disabled permits were ultimately approved, according to Department of Health figures. In the first half of this year, 3,535 were approved. More than half of applicants were denied a permit because their supporting documentation didn’t meet the criteria.

Despite laws that claim to provide accommodation, “the infrastructure of the city is inhospitable to people with disabilities,” said Katherine Macfarlane, an associate law professor and the incoming director of the Disability Law and Policy Program at Syracuse University College of Law.

“It’s no mystery that life is difficult for people with disabilities,” she said. “Fighting for the benefits the law entitles you to is exhausting. There is so much complexity that is built in.”

She herself has mobility problems from rheumatoid arthritis. “With all of my legal expertise, I still haven’t figured this stuff out,” she said, adding that obtaining needed accommodations is so often a “frustrating and demoralizing” struggle.

“It should be straightforward and easy for the city to help people,” she said. “It’s embarrassing that one of the greatest cities in the world can’t find a way to let this man park in peace.”