A refugee from another time receives an eviction notice (2023)

The hardships of the many can be lucrative for the few. Take the old Stewart Hotel in Manhattan, which is used as temporary housing for some of the tens of thousands of migrants who have come north to New York City seeking refuge.

The city pays $200 a night for 611 rooms in a nearly 100-year-old hotel. That works out to about $6,000 a month for each room, or about $3.66 million a month for hotel owners.

While they collect favorable rates for a fully booked hotel, the owners are also seeking to evict the man paying $865 a month for room 1810: William Mackiw, who has lived there for so long that no one knows when he first appeared. Decades have passed.

At some point, he moved in with the tenant of the rent-stabilized room, his aunt Louise. At some point she died. Decades have passed again.

And he just continued to pay a modest rent from what he earned as a waiter in regular fee restaurants. Your Howard Johnson. Your Charlie's steak. Month after month, year after year.

Mr. Mackiw, 82, a retired man, lives among the relics of a lonely life rooted in the past. Piles of old VHS and DVD movies. Threadbare shirts hanging over a discolored tub. Broken TV. A dust-covered rotary telephone. Four pairs of black boots clustered on the floor like a flock of crows.

In his limited world, whose narrow boundaries include the church and the market square, he lived mostly invisible. Until a few months ago someone knocked on his door and handed him a document. His message:

“It's time to leave you,” recalled Mr. Mackiw.

For 10 days.

With this, the economic, social, and geopolitical pressures of the larger world have combined to turn a tiny speck of it upside down, and not for the first time. Mr. Mackiw was also once a refugee-immigrant. He needed shelter then, and he may need it again soon.

In November 1949, General C.C. The Ballou, a reconfigured military transport ship with amenities that included a children's playroom, has left the German port of Bremerhaven. On board were 1,265 of the many millions of Europeans displaced by the upheaval of World War II.

Celestyn and Sofia Mackiw and their two sons, 12-year-old Siegfried and 9-year-old Wilhelm, were among the passengers, according to records kept by the Center for Migration Research in New York. Germany, where the displaced, persecuted and traumatized received food, clothing and medical care.

When asked why his family left Europe, Mackiw replied simply: "Because of the war." His fading memory brings back only flashes of his interrupted childhood: the horror of bombs; providing food to Jews hidden by his mother; lives in camps.

After arriving in the United States, the Mackivs settled in a detached building in the East Village district, sometimes called Little Ukraine. He remembers his mother as "an amazing woman" and his father as a brave window cleaner who "didn't bother with belts".

The family later moved to Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. Mr. Mackiw attended the local Mechanical and Metallurgy High School, became an American citizen in 1959, and worked a number of manual jobs before becoming a full-time waiter.

"I used to work in restaurants," he said.

Among them was Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, a gathering place for artists known and yet to be discovered in the Theater District. Everyone was leaning towards Mr. Franklin, a longtime radio and television host known for his knowledge of entertainment history.

"King of Nostalgia" proclaimed his business cards, one of which lies amidst the clutter of Room 1810. He died in 2015.

When Mr. Franklin sat at the courts with the likes of Soupy Sales and "Professor" Irwin Corey - you should look for them - his favorite waiter was Mr. Mackiw.

“Joe specifically sat in the section William was supposed to serve,” recalls Arnold Wachtel, a client of Joe Franklin who once ran Times Square gift and novelty stores such as the Fun Emporium and the Funny Store. "They reminisced about old movies and traded copies of movies on videotapes and DVDs."

At the end of his shift, the diminutive waiter would put his hat on his bald head and return to Stewart at Seventh Avenue and 31st Street, back to Room 1810.

Details are unclear, but a few decades ago, perhaps as early as the 1970s, retired seamstress Louise Hirschfeld moved into the 1810s, a one-bedroom apartment with a bathroom and kitchenette. She was the sister of Mr. Mackiw's mother, Sofia.

Mackiw's date of arrival was lost in the Manhattan mists of time. He slept on the couch while his aunt slept in the bed. She then went to France, where her son and grandchildren lived and where she died at the age of 81. In 1995.

Mr. Mackiw continued to pay his monthly rent by cash or money order and collect receipts bearing the name of his deceased aunt. When he wasn't sitting in the lobby, he wasn't shopping on Ninth Avenue or praying at St. Francis of Assisi around the corner, he sat in his room and watched films from Mackiw's extensive collection.

These escape portals are scattered in dozens on the floor. "King Kong". "Broken dart." "It comes from outer space." "To have and not to have". And his favorite: Gone with the Wind.

His routine did not change over time, the city evolved and the hotel passed under new owners. In 2016, the building was bought by a limited liability company whose partners refused last week through their lawyer to identify themselves. City records show that two of them are Isaac Chetrit, who owns the AB & Sons investment group with his brother Eli, and Ray Yadidi, who owns the real estate firm Sioni Group with his brother Jack.

The first threat to the island world of Mackiwa came early last year, when the owners informed half a dozen permanent residents that they would provide relocation assistance while the building was undergoing a major renovation. The plan was to close the hotel and turn it into a residential building with 625 apartments.

Apparently, then the owners discovered that it was Mr. Mackiw, and not the late. Louise Hirschfeld, occupies room 1810. Even though she personally transfers the rent every month for years.

After this revelation, Mackiw said, hotel representatives repeatedly knocked on his door to tell him in a firm and threatening way that he had to leave the room. The hotel denies ever harassing him.

At the same time, a humanitarian crisis was unfolding in New York as thousands of Central and South American migrants arrived to escape crime and economic uncertainty. Many arrived by bus, courtesy of the Republican governors of Arizona and Texas, who wanted to give the Northeast a taste of everyday life along the southern border.

The hotel's owners shelved redevelopment plans and in mid-September agreed to let the city rent half of the building, including 300 rooms, for use as a reception center and shelter for asylum seekers.

It wasn't enough. In mid-December, the city signed a new deal to take de facto control of the entire hotel, including the lobby, ballroom, and 611 rooms (price $200 per night). The deal, which provided temporary housing for some 2,000 migrants, did not include several housing units occupied by permanent residents.

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

Height: Five feet five.

Weight: 110 pounds.

Approximate age: 83 years.

Hair: Hat.

At this point, a distraught Mr. Mackiw contacted Mr. Wachtel, a former client of Joe Franklin, who had not heard from him for several years. But as the son of a Holocaust survivor, Wachtel was moved by the old man's ordeal - "The man is terrified" - and the family's memories of hiding Jews during the war.

“He's a nice guy,” said Mr. Wachtel. "Pray for me and my family."

Mr. Wachtel telephoned, sent e-mails and arranged for Mr. Mackiw's power of attorney. He also contacted the Goddard Riverside Law Project, which specializes in the rights of single-room tenants. Agreed to take on the case of the Housing Court of CYH Manhattan LLC v. William Mackiw a/k/a Bill Mackiw.

Daniel Evans, an attorney for 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 after spending six months in an apartment. There is no doubt that his stay was much longer than six months - much, much longer.

"It's outrageous that they brought this type of case after Mr Mackiw lived there for 40 years," Evans said. “Especially when he pays the rent himself at the front desk. They know he's there.

In a phone call, Lisa Faham-Selzer, a lawyer representing the owners, declined to answer a number of questions, including how long Mr Mackiw had lived at the hotel and why the hotel had been taking payments from him for decades.

"It's a strong case with very, very clear allegations," she said.

Mention of these allegations is contained in a recent lawsuit in which the owners allege that Mr. Mackiw "had been posing as Louise Hirschfeld for decades." They claim that in doing so, he "committed fraud."

The case is pending. Court records do not indicate eviction proceedings initiated against any of the other permanent tenants of the hotel, although one moved out after receiving a $10,000 buyout.

For now, Mr. Mackiw, a refugee from another time, still lives among today's refugees, worrying to tears about his future.

He resides mostly in Room 1810, his longtime home. There, on a recent visit, the only food seemed to be milk, a few slices of cheese, peanut butter, a box of Cheerios, a packet of vanilla Oreos, and a couple of Hershey chocolate bars.

"Do you want Hershey?" asked the old waiter.

Karen Zraick contributed the report and Alain Delaquérière contributed to the research.

Sound produced by Parin Behrooz.