The hotel’s owners set aside their conversion plans and, in mid-September, agreed to allow the city to rent half the building, including 300 rooms, for use as an intake center and refuge for asylum seekers.

It wasn’t enough. In mid-December, the city signed a new contract to take effective control of the entire hotel, including the lobby, the ballroom and 611 rooms (at $200 a night). The agreement, which gave temporary housing to about 2,000 migrants, did not include the several units occupied by permanent residents.

The same week in September that the hotel began renting rooms to the city at market rates, a process server handed a 10-day eviction notice to the man who answered a knock on the door of Room 1810. The server described Mr. Mackiw this way:

Height: Five foot five.

Weight: 110 pounds.

Approximate age: 83.

Hair: Hat.

By this point, a distressed Mr. Mackiw had reached out to Mr. Wachtel, his old Joe Franklin’s customer, who had not heard from him in more than a dozen years. But as the son of a Holocaust survivor, Mr. Wachtel was moved by the older man’s ordeal — “The man is terrified” — and family memories of harboring Jews during the war.

“He’s a nice guy,” Mr. Wachtel said. “He prays for me and my family.”

Mr. Wachtel made phone calls, sent emails and arranged to hold Mr. Mackiw’s power of attorney. He also contacted the Goddard Riverside Law Project, which specializes in the rights of single-room-occupancy tenants. It agreed to take the Housing Court case of CYH Manhattan LLC against William Mackiw a/k/a Bill Mackiw.

Daniel Evans, a lawyer with Goddard Riverside, said that under the city’s rent-stabilization codes, Mr. Mackiw acquired the rights and protections of a permanent S.R.O. resident once he had spent six months in the apartment. There is no dispute that his stay has been much longer than six months — much, much longer.