“This community has always been a community,” said Barbara Abrams, 74, who has lived in her 10th-floor apartment overlooking the Empire State Building since the 1970s. “People say hello. You hold the door open for each other. It is simply beautiful.”

Now suddenly there was a victim.

Mr. Caballero, 55, started working as a handyman at Co-ops in February 1990 and ten years later he was given an apartment on the understanding that he would be available 24 hours a day for emergency repairs.

The neighborhood had a rougher image back then, and the co-ops came out of financial hardship, and apartments became empty. Myrtle Avenue, the complex’s northern boundary, was known as Murder Avenue.

Mr. Caballero, who has an easy-going demeanor, became a favorite of residents, as did his two children. “He smiles all the time,” Ms. Abrams said. “I never saw him scowl.”

Seven hundred residents signed a petition urging the board to keep Mr. Caballero and his family in place. When local residents demonstrated outside a board meeting in February, carrying signs that read “Worker Justice” and “Hector Stays,” someone called the police. An 88th Precinct official urged the crowd to disperse. “The eviction,” she announced, “is a done deal.”

This only increased the anger in the complex.

“I didn’t think it was radical to say, ‘We want to keep the community the way it is,'” said Helen Yentus, 38, who bought her home three and a half years ago. “As a gentrifier, as a new person, that’s what I moved here for.”

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