“We’ve been living out of boxes for two and a half years,” said Susie Kwak Ting.
Her family’s story begins with a move into one temporary apartment and ends with a move into another. A permanent fix, she hopes, is within sight.
She and her husband, Lee Ting, were raising their two daughters — one 4 years old and the other a newborn — in a one-bedroom Financial District apartment when the pandemic began. It was difficult to make life work in such a tight space under normal circumstances; it became nearly impossible once all four of them were always home.
They bought EverBlocks — heavy, plastic building blocks — to make partitions, straining for the illusion of discrete spaces in the crowded apartment. “It eventually became a joke,” she said. “The four of us in this one-bedroom. We knew we had to move.”
They took advantage of plummeting rents and signed a lease for a two-bedroom a few blocks away, which kept them close to Mr. Ting’s family. His parents had moved to the city from suburban New Jersey to be full-time grandparents, helping to get the girls to school and with afternoon care — reveling in the opportunity to be a part of their grandchildren’s daily lives.
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
