New York

5,000 Miles, 8 Countries: The Path to the U.S. Through One Family’s Eyes

Published

2 years ago

July 8, 2024

5,000 Miles, 8 Countries: The Path to the U.S. Through One Family’s Eyes

The three children had not bathed in four days.

They had been sleeping in a makeshift tent on a dirty street outside a bus terminal in Mexico City, and Hayli, only 6, was developing a rash between her legs. But the parents could not spare the 20 pesos, or roughly $1, for a bucket shower.

After a 55-day trek through Latin America, the five members of the Aguilar Ortega family were stranded more than 3,000 miles from their Venezuelan homeland, and almost as many miles from their intended destination: New York City.

It had been a week since they had arrived in Mexico City, and they had no money to proceed north. The children — Hayli, Samuel, 10, and Josué, 11 — were in good spirits, imagining aloud what it would be like to live in New York. But for the parents, Henry Aguilar, 34, and his partner, Leivy Ortega, 29, the lull demanded a reassessment of what still lay ahead.

While Mayor Eric Adams of New York spoke at a nearby conference in Mexico City, the Aguilar Ortega family slept in tents.

Millions of Venezuelans like the Aguilar Ortega family have fled economic misery and political repression in their homeland as it descended into turmoil. The exodus has led to a sharp increase in crossings at the U.S. border, reigniting immigration as one of the most polarizing issues ahead of the presidential election.

Indeed, the Biden administration recently took executive action to limit the number of migrants crossing the southern border. The decision angered critics who contend that it contradicts America’s image as a safe harbor for the vulnerable. But others welcomed the move amid concerns that migrants were being let in with few checks.

Mr. Aguilar embodied that paradox. He set off for the United States with a turbulent past as a soldier, police officer and bodyguard in Venezuela, and after a prison stint that could derail his chances of securing asylum.

But Mr. Aguilar was hoping to start anew.

Ms. Ortega dreamed of maybe one day opening a restaurant. Both were chasing a vague promise of a better future in the United States while casting aside the real possibility that his criminal history could render the family’s hardship for naught.

The New York Times documented the family’s one-year odyssey, first meeting them in Mexico City, and then rejoining them at the U.S.-Mexican border. The ordeal would test their mental and physical fortitude, strain the parents’ relationship, and challenge their commitment and ability to build a new life in the United States.

The family’s dog, Donna, was with the family every step of the journey.

The journey took them through a jungle of dead bodies and was filled with dangers that terrified the parents, including an obstacle course of dirty police officers, smugglers and immigration checkpoints they traversed on foot and by bus. They had to panhandle, sell lollipops and hustle up odd jobs along the way.

But for the children, the journey was framed as a daring family experience. They took pictures and recorded video that they shared with The Times. They even brought their coffee-colored Labrador mix, Donna. In their eyes, it was all part of a big adventure that would end in a place they had seen only in movies.

“The kids want to go to New York,” Mr. Aguilar said in Spanish as he stood by his tent in Mexico City. “They want to see Times Square.”

But his American dream was even simpler: “All I want is to take my kids to play ball in a park,” he said.

MAY – AUGUST 2023 COLOMBIA

Samuel, Hayli and Josué pose for a photo in Colombia, where along the way they slept in a town plaza for two weeks.

The Decision to Go to New York

Mr. Aguilar left Venezuela about six years ago, part of a flight of more than seven million people who have escaped a once-wealthy country where the economy collapsed and crime skyrocketed under President Nicolás Maduro.

Three years later, Mr. Aguilar found himself in Chile, where he sparked a romance with Ms. Ortega, who is also Venezuelan, and they blended their families. Ms. Ortega left behind a 13-year-old daughter in Ecuador because she was too sick to travel.

Besides Ecuador, the family also spent time in Peru before setting their sights on the United States at the children’s prodding. So they headed to Colombia but with no money, no plan and no place to sleep — a frequent plight during their voyage.

They slept in a town plaza there for two weeks before Mr. Aguilar and Ms. Ortega gathered enough money to rent a home. Colombia, Mr. Aguilar thought, was where he would prepare the children for the menacing rainforest between Colombia and Panama known as the Darién Gap.

“It’s going to be a grand adventure,” Mr. Aguilar recalled telling them. “But with real-life obstacles.”

So Mr. Aguilar put them through an at-home boot camp with a summer camp feel, letting them ride bicycles to boost their stamina.

He woke them up before 7 a.m., but their breakfast portions were small to brace for the coming hunger.

Crossing the Darién Gap

At first, the journey into “la selva,” or the jungle, had the trappings of an organized tour.

The family was given pink wristbands after paying $300 to the armed men who control access to the Darién Gap. And surrounded by hundreds of Venezuelans, they even had a sense of anticipation as they smiled for selfies, their clothes still clean.

That excitement would fade as they waded into the jungle’s depths.

Their feet were rubbed raw as they trudged through mud. Hayli lost two toenails and cried as dirt seeped into the exposed skin. Torrents of rain made rivers roar, forcing Mr. Aguilar to ferry each family member across, one by one — with Donna the Labrador’s stubbornness nearly drowning him.

“Muerto! Muerto!” those toward the front would call back as they passed the bodies of migrants. “Dead! Dead!”

Ms. Ortega generously, but perhaps naïvely, shared the family’s food with other migrants, leaving the family to subsist on nothing but river water on the last two days of the six-day hike through the jungle.

It was hard to hide the brutality of the journey from the children.

“No puedo,” Ms. Ortega would say. “I can’t.”

AUGUST – OCTOBER PANAMA TO MEXICO CITY

The parents presented the journey as a grand adventure to the children.

The family used currency to keep track of places they went through in Guatemala and Mexico.

Getting to Mexico City

Once out of the jungle, the children were committed to the adventure as they crisscrossed dirt roads and slipped from one country into the next.

Josué, ever talkative, told anyone within earshot that they were headed to New York to see Times Square, or las pantallas: the screens.

Samuel, the most reserved of the three, assumed the role of navigator. He quietly tracked their trek on a wrinkled map of Central America as Donna meandered without a leash.

Hayli was always the first to smile for pictures, flashing her tooth gap. Her small legs carried her for hours, as the family circumvented border checkpoints in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.

But for the parents, the burden of not having money was inescapable.

There was transportation to arrange and immigration officers to grease. Bus companies would charge them double or refuse to sell them tickets because they were migrants, a taste of the prejudice that awaited them further north.

They often slept in tents on the street, and going to sleep without eating became normal.

In Guatemala, police officers patted down migrants to steal their money. They groped Ms. Ortega’s breast, leaving her feeling violated, she said. Mr. Aguilar created hiding places for their cash, using toenail clippers to cut small openings into Hayli’s jacket and Josué’s pants. The ruse worked.

They mostly came to rely on the charity of strangers and sporadic money transfers from friends and relatives: more than $8,000 in total, the parents acknowledged with a trace of shame.

OCTOBER – NOVEMBER MEXICO CITY TO CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico

Hopping Freight Trains

The family rode a succession of freight trains to the U.S. border.

The wait for a train could last for hours, especially in the dead of night. When one stopped, they would all emerge from hiding near the tracks and clamber onto a car’s metal roof.

They fastened themselves as best they could, wrapped loosely in rope and blankets, the wind blowing against their faces as they left behind Mexico City.

They were riding “la bestia,” or the beast, the frightening nickname for the cargo trains that many migrants hop illegally, hoping to evade checkpoints and cartels. Countless people have died or lost limbs riding the trains.

Ms. Ortega wrapped her legs around Hayli and prayed that the boys would not fall off. Bundled in quilts, the boys squinted their eyes against the cold breeze, taking in the arid shrub land.

The nights were the hardest. They battled falling asleep, fearful with each jerk of the train that they would fall off.

NOV. 9-10 CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO

A family selfie along the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before they crossed into Texas.

Ms. Ortega looks at a family ring, the only heirloom she brought from Venezuela.

On their last night in Juárez, the family left for the border patrol checkpoint at 3 a.m.

Approaching the Border

The Times reconnected with the family in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city where migrants are regularly smuggled and kidnapped for ransom, and sometimes murdered. The Aguilar Ortegas were visibly disheveled, emerging from the last train with little but the clothes on their back, closer than ever to the United States.

“Time is going by slowly now,” Mr. Aguilar said after taking the children to glance at the Rio Grande. Texas was just a few yards away, behind a towering fence.

Using a mobile app that the Biden administration has relied on to curb illegal crossings, the family had secured a coveted appointment to enter the United States legally the next day — the first step for many migrants seeking asylum.

But with no money left for food that night, they decided to pawn Ms. Ortega’s white gold ring, her last family heirloom.

A pawnshop offered her 400 pesos, or $23 — a lowball price, she thought, perhaps because she was Venezuelan. She found a Mexican man to sell the ring for her.

The shop offered him more than double, about $70. She took the money, feeling sad but clever, and slightly empowered.

Entering the United States

As dawn crept across the Rio Grande, migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela with immigration appointments braced the frigid desert air on a bridge connecting Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, Texas.

After entering so many countries illegally, the family’s final border crossing was to be entirely lawful. But that did little to ease their nerves as federal officers began to check their passports, take fingerprints and photographs, and swab their cheeks for DNA.

It is not clear what immigration officials knew of Mr. Aguilar.

He had a tumultuous upbringing in Venezuela: He said he was kicked out of the house as a teenager, and was in a motorcycle accident that resulted in permanent memory loss that blurs his childhood.

Still, he recalled dreaming of becoming a detective, and after a stop in the military, he joined Venezuela’s largest national police agency, which is heavily politicized and has a history of corruption.

Mr. Aguilar was part of a SWAT-like unit that specialized in taking down organized crime when, as a 21-year-old police officer, he was arrested and charged in 2010 with abusing his authority.

Venezuelan prosecutors accused him of participating in an armed shakedown of someone who owed his friend money. The friend and Mr. Aguilar, said to be carrying another officer’s gun, were accused of holding several people at gunpoint and stealing money and bottles of whiskey. Mr. Aguilar was charged with aggravated robbery, extortion and embezzlement, according to the few court documents available online.

Mr. Aguilar says Venezuelan prosecutors distorted the charges and that he and his friend weren’t violent. In court documents, he portrayed himself as accompanying his friend for backup. He eventually served two years in prison, he said.

At the U.S. border, background checks did not appear to turn up Mr. Aguilar’s criminal past. The family was released on parole — a status that allows migrants without visas to live and work in the country as their asylum cases wind through the courts.

Mr. Aguilar’s first court appearance before an immigration judge is scheduled for April 2025. He doesn’t know how he intends to deal with his past: The government can bar asylum for people convicted of serious crimes, and Mr. Aguilar would have to disclose his record on his asylum application.

None of that was front of mind as the family walked into downtown El Paso, ushered in by an archway with a familiar greeting: Bienvenidos.

NOV. 10-24 EL PASO, TEXAS

The family shared tight quarters in a shelter with other migrants arriving daily to El Paso.

Mr. Aguilar slept outside the shelter in El Paso with Donna, because dogs weren’t allowed.

Tumult in Texas

By Day 3 in El Paso, the family was already in turmoil. Ms. Ortega had gotten in a fight at a shelter with three Venezuelan women after tempers flared in the dinner line. The family was forced to go to another shelter.

Ms. Ortega sat down on a stoop, her face scratched, and began to cry.

They were told they did not qualify for free migrant buses out of Texas. And while they had collected $120 — mostly thanks to Donna, who attracted generous passers-by — commercial bus transport to New York was up to $450 per person. They had survived a treacherous monthslong journey, only to be stranded again.

Ms. Ortega thought of the upcoming birthday of her daughter in Ecuador, and wondered if she would have money for a gift. She spoke wistfully about a friend who had made it to New York and already had an apartment and enough money to help his family in Venezuela.

“It’s not envy, but I want to be over there already,” she said through tears. “I feel stuck here. It hasn’t even been 72 hours and I’ve already been hit.”

Mr. Aguilar consoled her. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “But we always figure it out.”

The journey had taken its toll on the children. When Josué and Samuel played with toy cars on the sidewalk, they re-enacted scenes from their young lives: immigration police officers chasing migrants.

And tensions between the parents began to simmer as they deciphered what to do next. Was New York even the right place to go?

“Things are tough in New York with the 100,000 migrants who have arrived there,” Father Rafael García warned them gently at their first shelter, which is run by the Roman Catholic Church.

Taped to the shelter wall, a flier in Spanish paid for by New York City offered a more dire assessment: “It’s best if you go to a more affordable city.”

The flight the family took to New York was the first time Ms. Ortega had been on a plane.

After arriving, the family headed for a familiar migrant starting point, the Roosevelt Hotel.

Fasten Your Seatbelts

Hayli cried when her ears popped for the first time as the plane gained altitude, but once it glided into La Guardia Airport, her sense of wonder took over.

“Papi, the bathroom was magical!” she exclaimed, recounting how the hand dryers and toilets sprung to life via sensors.

Just a few weeks earlier, New York had seemed out of reach. But in El Paso, the family met a group of Christian missionaries from Michigan who, taken aback by their story, raised nearly $2,000 for Delta flights.

And so it was that the family landed in New York the day after Thanksgiving with 20 cents, their few belongings stuffed inside a donated suitcase and a pink sleeping bag that Mr. Aguilar hauled like Santa Claus.

The family had heard that if they went to a place called Manhattan, they could get free shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel, the welcoming center for the 200,000 migrants who have recently come to the city.

At a Queens subway station, they persuaded a Spanish-speaking police officer to let them in without paying the fare. They climbed a maze of stairs and almost boarded the wrong train until a passer-by offered them guidance.

The children stared out the 7 train in awe as the city skyline materialized against an orange sunset.

“Better than riding the top of a train,” Mr. Aguilar said.

NOV. 25 – DEC. 9 MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN

For the children, Times Square was the goal. They stared in awe at the lit-up screens and the costumed superheroes.

The family celebrated Ms. Ortega’s 29th birthday at the Floyd Bennett Field shelter in Brooklyn.

Trying to Make It in New York

The children held hands in Times Square. They strolled around Central Park, posing for a picture by the statue of Simón Bolivar, the revered Venezuelan who fought Spain.

But the allure of sightseeing quickly gave way to challenges: finding jobs, permanent housing, a sense of stability.

They had been assigned to a far-flung Brooklyn shelter at Floyd Bennett Field, an old airfield on Jamaica Bay where the city is housing hundreds of families in a giant tent dormitory.

Upset by the tent environment and its distance from Manhattan, Mr. Aguilar, prone to making rash decisions, initially rejected the shelter’s free room and board before acknowledging it was the family’s only option.

“I was being rebellious,” Mr. Aguilar said. “I’ve been wrong so many times before. I’m not perfect.”

But the parents began getting antsy. The shelter was getting crowded. They didn’t speak English or know how to apply for a legal work permit.

So after just three weeks, Mr. Aguilar uprooted his family again.

DECEMBER – MARCH MIDDLETOWN, CONN.

The family was placed into a two-bedroom home in Middletown, Conn., after leaving the shelter system in New York.

Hayli and the boys were enrolled in schools, where they quickly picked up English.

A New Home in Connecticut

A few days before Christmas, the family was sleeping in a car outside a gas station in Brooklyn.

The children snuggled tightly in the back seat, braving the cold in a beat-up Honda sedan Mr. Aguilar had found on Facebook for $800. Then good fortune intervened.

During a brief stay in Connecticut a few weeks earlier, the family had met Maria Cardona, who works at a social services provider there. She called Ms. Ortega to check in, and learned of the family’s setup. She immediately made some calls.

“Their situation impacted me deeply,” Ms. Cardona said.

She helped them move into a two-bedroom house on a leafy street in Middletown, Conn., operated by a local nonprofit that provides free emergency housing for homeless families. The family was allowed to stay on a month-by-month basis if they showed a case manager they were actively looking for employment and a permanent home.

More help arrived.

Amy Swan, the psychologist at the children’s elementary school, gathered donations of food and clothes, as well as money to pay the $410 fee for Mr. Aguilar to apply for a permit to work legally.

Her husband, Ray Swan, owns a wood workshop and was looking for a worker. So he hired Mr. Aguilar, who worked in carpentry after leaving Venezuela, and began paying him $20 an hour to build furniture and kitchen cabinets.

“He works hard and doesn’t complain,” Mr. Swan said at his workshop in March. “I can’t stop singing his praises.”

MARCH – JULY MIDDLETOWN, CONN. TO HOUSTON

After abruptly leaving Connecticut for Houston, the family faced new challenges.

The parents share news of her pregnancy with their three children.

More Turmoil and an Uncertain Future

In early March, the family received more welcome news: Ms. Ortega was pregnant.

She’s expected to give birth later this year. Having a child who is a U.S. citizen would not give the parents any special protections against deportation, leaving the family’s immigration status in flux.

Immigration lawyers said that Mr. Aguilar’s past will seriously complicate his bid for asylum, an uphill process that usually ends with judges saying no.

“If it’s God’s will that I’m not here in two years, then so be it,” Mr. Aguilar said in Connecticut in March. “I’m happy being with my family and making them happy.”

But the parents were still stressing about their future, and their relationship continued to fray. One night in mid-April, Ms. Ortega grabbed a baseball bat and swung at Mr. Aguilar, hitting his hands. She said it happened in the heat of the moment. Mr. Aguilar was not injured and did not hit back.

She was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, and a protective order was issued to keep Ms. Ortega away from Mr. Aguilar. He lost his carpentry job, and the family was forced from the house. Mr. Aguilar was placed in a shelter for domestic violence victims with his children, Samuel and Hayli; Ms. Ortega was set up elsewhere with Josué, her son.

The family was languishing again — apart, with a baby on the way and their immigration status still in question.

Desperate, they fell back on the same spur-of-the-moment manner that guided their travels. Ignoring the protective order and strapped for money, the parents reconciled and abandoned Connecticut, leaving Ms. Ortega’s court case unresolved. They hauled the children and Donna south in the old Honda, hoping it wouldn’t break down.

About 1,700 miles and five days later, they arrived in Houston, where the mother of Mr. Aguilar’s two children took the family in, cramming into a small apartment with mattresses on the floor.

Mr. Aguilar is applying for landscaping jobs while doing delivery gigs. Ms. Ortega has been satisfying her pregnancy cravings with mangos.

But, ever restless, the parents were already hatching next moves.

Denver seemed promising. Salt Lake City, perhaps.

In Houston, at least, Mr. Aguilar had fulfilled his wish: He found a park to play catch with the children.

New York

How a Parks Worker Lives on $37,500 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island

Published

5 days ago

February 28, 2026

Press Room

How a Parks Worker Lives on ,500 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island

How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.

We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?

Sara Robinson boarded a Greyhound bus from Oregon to New York City to attend Hunter College in the early 2000s, bright-eyed and eager to pick up odd jobs to fuel her dream of living there.

For a long time, she made it work. But recently, that has been more challenging than ever.

Right around her 40th birthday, Ms. Robinson began to feel financially squeezed in Brooklyn, where she had lived for years. Ms. Robinson (no relation to this reporter) was also feeling too grown to live with roommates.

“As a child,” she said, “you don’t think you’re going to have a roommate at 40.” She decided to move into a place of her own: a one-bedroom apartment in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.

After she moved, the preschool where she’d worked for over a decade closed. Now, she works two jobs. She is a seasonal employee for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, working from Tuesday to Saturday. And on Monday nights, she sells concessions at the West Village movie theater Film Forum, which pays $25 an hour plus tips.

Ms. Robinson, now 45, loves her job as an environmental educator at a state park on Staten Island. Her team runs the park’s social media accounts and comes up with event programming, like a recent project tapping maple trees to make syrup.

But the role is temporary. Her last stint was from June 2024 to January 2025. Then she was unemployed until August 2025. Ms. Robinson’s current contract will be up in April, unless she gets an extension or a different parks job opens up.

Ms. Robinson’s biweekly pay stubs from the parks department amount to about $1,300 before taxes. She barely felt a difference, she said, while she was out of work and pocketing around $880 every two weeks from her unemployment checks. (Her previous parks gig paid $1,100 a check.)

Living in New York’s Greenest Borough

“It used to be, ‘There’s no way I’m moving to Staten Island,’” Ms. Robinson said. “But the place is close to the water. I’m three minutes from the ferry. The rest is history.” She lives on the third floor of a multifamily house, above an art studio and another tenant. Her rent is $1,600 a month, plus $125 in utilities, including her phone bill.

“If my situation changes, I don’t know if I could find something similar,” she said. “So much of my New York life has been feeling trapped to an apartment. You get a place for a good price, and you’re like, ‘I can’t leave now.’”

Staten Island is convenient for Ms. Robinson’s parks job, but it’s become harder to justify living in a borough where she knows few people. It takes more than an hour to get to friends in Brooklyn, an especially hard trek during the winter. After four years of living on Staten Island, Ms. Robinson feels somewhat isolated.

“All my friends on Staten Island are senior citizens,” she said. “It’s great. I love it. But I do want friends closer to my age.”

One of Ms. Robinson’s friends, Ray, took her on nature walks and taught her about tree identification, sparking an interest in mycology, the study of mushrooms. This led to a productive — and free — fungi foraging hobby during unemployment. She has found all sorts of mushrooms, including, after a month of searching, the elusive morel.

The Budgeting Game

Ms. Robinson doesn’t update her furniture often, but when she does, she shops stoop sales in Park Slope or other parts of Brooklyn.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” she said. “You could make a whole apartment off the street, off the stuff that people throw away.”

She also makes a game out of grocery shopping, biking to Sunset Park in Brooklyn or Manhattan’s Chinatown to go to stores where there are better deals. She budgets about $300 for groceries each month.

Ms. Robinson bikes almost everywhere, sometimes traveling a little farther to enter the Staten Island Railway at one of the stations that don’t charge a fare. She spends $80 a month on subway and ferry fares, and $5 a month for a discounted Citi Bike membership she gets through a credit union, though she usually uses her own bike. She is handy and does repairs herself.

There are certain splurges — Ms. Robinson drops $400 once or twice a year on round-trip airfare to Seattle, where her family lives. She also spent $100 last year to see a concert at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.

She said she has many financial saving graces. She has no student loans and no car to make payments on. She doesn’t get health insurance from her jobs, but she qualifies for Medicaid.

She mostly eats at home, though sometimes friends will treat her to dinner. She repays them with tickets to Film Forum movies.

Nothing Beats the Twinkling Lights

Ms. Robinson’s friends often talk about leaving the city — and the country.

Two friends have their eyes set on Sweden, where they hope to get the affordable child care and social safety net they are struggling to access in New York.

Ms. Robinson can’t see herself moving elsewhere in the United States, but she is entertaining the idea of an international move if she can’t hack it on Staten Island.

Yet the pull of the city is hard for her to resist.

“I just get a rush when I’m riding the Staten Island Ferry across the bay,” she said. “You see all the little twinkling lights. It’s this feeling of, ‘everything is possible here.’”

That feeling, plus the many friendly faces Ms. Robinson sees every day — the ferry operators, the conductors on the Staten Island Railway, her co-workers at Film Forum — are what tie her to New York.

“My savings are not increasing, so there’s that,” she said. “But I’ve been OK so far. I think I’m going to figure it out.”

New York

How the Editor in Chief of Marie Claire Gets Styled for a Trip to Italy

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

How the Editor in Chief of Marie Claire Gets Styled for a Trip to Italy

Nikki Ogunnaike, the editor in chief of Marie Claire magazine, did not grow up the scion of an Anna Wintour or a Marc Jacobs.

But, she said, “my mom and dad are both very stylish people.”

They got dressed up to go to church every week in her hometown Springfield, Va. Her mother managed a Staples; her father, a CVS. “Presentation is important to them,” she said.

Since landing her first internship with Glamour magazine in college, Ms. Ogunnaike, 40, has held editorial roles there and at Elle magazine and GQ. She has been in the top post at Marie Claire since 2023.

She recently spent a Saturday with The New York Times as she prepared for Milan Fashion Week.

New York

How a Physical Therapist and a Retiree Live on $208,000 in Harlem

Published

2 weeks ago

February 21, 2026

Press Room

How a Physical Therapist and a Retiree Live on 8,000 in Harlem

How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.

It has never really occurred to Marian or Charles Wade to live anywhere but the city where they were born and where they raised their children.

New York is in their bones. “We have our roots here, and our families enjoyed life here before us,” Ms. Wade said.

And they feel lucky. Between Mr. Wade’s pension, earned after more than 40 years as an analyst at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and his Social Security benefits, along with Ms. Wade’s work as a physical therapist at a psychiatric center, they bring in about $208,000 a year.

Still, it’s hard for the couple not to notice how much the city has changed as it has become wealthier.

About 10 years ago, Ms. Wade, 65, and Mr. Wade, 69, sold the Morningside Heights apartment they had lived in for decades. The Manhattan neighborhood had become more affluent, and tensions over how their building should be managed and how much residents should be expected to pay for upkeep boiled over between people who had lived there for years and newer neighbors.

They found a new home in Harlem, large enough to fit their two children, who are now adults struggling to afford the city’s housing market.

All in the Family

Ms. Wade knew it was time to leave Morningside Heights when she spotted her husband hiding behind a bush outside their building, hoping to avoid an unpleasant new neighbor. They had bought their apartment in 1994 for $206,000, using some money they had inherited from their families, and sold it in 2015 for $1.13 million.

The couple found a new apartment in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem for $811,000, and put most of the money down upfront. They took out a loan with a good rate for the remaining cost, and had a $947 monthly payment. They recently finished paying off the mortgage, but they have monthly maintenance payments of $1,555, as well as two temporary assessments to help improve the building, totaling $415 a month.

Their two children each moved home shortly after graduating from college.

The couple’s son, Jacob Wade, 28, split an apartment with three roommates nearby for a while, but spent down his savings and moved back in with his parents. He is searching for an affordable one bedroom nearby and plans to move out later in the year. Their daughter, Elka Wade, 27, came home after college but recently moved to an apartment in Astoria, Queens, with roommates.

Until their daughter moved out a few weeks ago, she and her brother each took a bedroom, and Mr. and Ms. Wade slept in the dining room, which they had converted into their bedroom with the help of a Murphy bed and a new set of curtains for privacy.

There is very little storage space. A piano occupies an entire closet in their son’s bedroom, because the family has no other place to fit it.

The setup is cramped, but close quarters have their benefits: When their daughter, a classically trained cellist, was living there, she often practiced at home in the evenings. “I love listening to her play,” Ms. Wade said.

Three Foodtowns and a Thrift Shop

The Wades do what they can to keep their costs low. They’ve decided against installing new, better insulated windows in their drafty apartment. They don’t go on vacations, instead visiting their small weekend home in rural upstate New York. And they’ve pulled back on takeout food and retail shopping.

Instead, Mr. Wade surveys the three Foodtown supermarkets near their home for the best deals, preferring one for produce and another for meat. The weekly grocery bill has been around $500 with both kids living at home, and the family usually orders delivery twice a week, rotating between Chinese and Indian food, which typically costs $70, including leftovers.

For an occasional splurge, they love Pisticci, a nearby restaurant where the penne with homemade mozzarella costs $21.

The couple owns a car, which they park on the street for free. But they often use public transportation to avoid paying the $9 congestion pricing fee to drive downtown, or when they have a good parking spot they don’t want to give up. They have a senior discount for their transit cards, which allows them to pay $1.50 per subway or bus ride, rather than $3.

Ms. Wade stopped shopping at the stores she used to frequent, like Eileen Fisher and Banana Republic, years ago. Instead, she visits a thrift store called Unique Boutique on the Upper West Side. She was browsing the aisles a few months ago, before a big Thanksgiving dinner, and spotted the perfect dress for the occasion for just $20.

But she has one nonnegotiable weekly expense: a private yoga lesson in an instructor’s apartment nearby, for $150 a session.

Elka Wade, a cellist, often practices at home, to the delight of her parents. Bess Adler for The New York Times

Swapping Mortgage Payments for Singing Lessons

For every member of the Wade family, life in New York is all about the arts.

The children each attended the Special Music School, a public school focused on the arts. Their son, an actor, teacher and director, works part time at the Metropolitan Opera and the Kaufman Music Center, a performing arts complex in Manhattan. His sister works in administration at the Kaufman Center.

Mr. Wade is still close with friends from high school who are now professional musicians, and the couple often goes to see them play at venues like the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, where shows typically have a $12 cover and a two-drink minimum.

The couple has cut back on going to expensive concerts — they used to try to see Elvis Costello every time he came to New York, for example — but have timeworn strategies for getting affordable theater tickets.

They recently splurged on tickets to “Oedipus” on Broadway for themselves and their daughter, who they treated to a ticket as a birthday gift. The seats were in the nosebleed section, but still cost $80 apiece.

The couple has a $75 annual membership to the Film Forum, which gives them reduced price tickets to movies. They occasionally get discounted tickets to the opera through their son’s work, and when they don’t, they pay for family circle passes, which are usually $47 a head, plus a $10 fee.

Ms. Wade, who grew up commuting from Flushing, Queens, to Manhattan to take dance lessons, sometimes takes $20 drop-in ballet classes during the week at the Dance Theater of Harlem, just a few blocks away from the apartment.

Recently, when the couple paid off their mortgage, Ms. Wade celebrated by giving herself a treat: weekly private singing lessons, for $125 a session.