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The Gilmores, a family of five, all sleep together in one bed in their one-bedroom apartment in South Slope. It’s a queen-size bunk bed — two kids on top, two adults and a baby on the bottom — and they had it custom made.

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A block party on Macdonough Street in Bed Stuy. Photo by Cate Corcoran

It’s not that they couldn’t afford to live in a bigger apartment, according to The New York Times. But they opted to stay put because of close social ties in the area — including being part of a preschool co-op.

Except for the custom furniture, this is nothing new in New York City, where immigrants have been squeezing big families into small spaces for 200 years. Sunset Park and Bushwick are full of illegal SROs where families — or more than one family — share a room.

The difference, according to the Times, is now families of means are doing this by choice.

Exhibit B: The Furgusons, a family of four, who actually purchased an entire townhouse in Clinton Hill, then never moved from their 1,000-square-foot apartment near Barclays Center — which they also own — because they couldn’t bear to tear their two children away from their friends.

Several other examples concern families in Manhattan. Is this a real trend? Or just more evidence of the limited real estate choices in a very expensive city?

[Source: NYT]

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High Rents Forcing Out Families in Bushwick

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Families visiting Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo by Barbara Eldredge

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Macdonough Street. Photo by Cate Corcoran


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Yep, they’re glamorizing it. with glossy pics of kids playing in the hallways and mom sitting on the floor surrounded my kids against a chalk wall. So many people of lesser means live like this (without the chalk wall)

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