On the Second Try, a Family Is Welcomed in Queens

It was the day Patrick Boyd and his family moved into their new home in East Elmhurst, Queens. They were so relieved to be in the single-family house and had just finished getting all their belongings inside when there was a knock at the door.

“It made me nervous,” Mr. Boyd said. “In my mind I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, what did we do? Did we upset someone?’”

The knock was a trigger of sorts, reminding him of the day they moved into a Jackson Heights co-op — the place they were desperately fleeing when they arrived in East Elmhurst. The knock on the co-op door had led to what Mr. Boyd described as a “long and tortured experience” that lasted five years.

On that day in 2014, he was assembling a table so that he and his wife, Natalia Nakazawa, could have dinner. When he answered the door, Mr. Boyd saw one of his new neighbors, looking angry and flustered. “She said, ‘I don’t know what you people are doing in here,’” he recalled. “‘There’s so much noise, all this dragging around.’ And I told her, ‘Well, we did just move in. We’re setting up our kitchen table, and we’re about to have our first dinner in the apartment.’”

It made for an uncomfortable beginning, but things quieted for a while after that.

Then Mr. Boyd and Ms. Nakazawa decided to start a family and that changed everything. “Everyone was welcoming to us without children,” Ms. Nakazawa said, “and the minute we had a kid everyone was, like, ‘Oh, those people.’”

After their son, Kai, was born, they started receiving warnings from the board about noise complaints. Then there was an apartment inspection to confirm they had sufficient rug coverage. “We had it wall-to-wall,” Ms. Nakazawa said. “It was thick, with a layer of foam.”

Then there was a sharp increase in the rent, followed by two separate $250 noise fines.

“Sure, there were the sounds of people living their lives,” Mr. Boyd said, “but by no means were we doing anything extreme. It turned into a quality-of-life thing, the fear of making noise, of playing with your kid. We finally just had to say, it’s not worth it. Let’s move.”

He went old-school and looked for a quick solution on Craigslist. The first thing he saw was the house in East Elmhurst. He called immediately, and later that same day he put Kai in a wagon and walked over to meet the landlord.

Eric Yu, whose parents bought the house in the 1990s, spent his teenage years living there. His father happened to be with him the day Mr. Boyd and Kai showed up, and the Yus were both taken by the prospective tenant and his son. “Kai was hopping around in the front yard and having a lot of fun,” Mr. Yu said. “It was just meant to be.”

They were two sets of fathers-and-sons and there was an immediate connection. Mr. Boyd felt something he hadn’t in a long time: welcomed. “Patrick told me they were trying to raise a family and save up, and I could relate to that,” Mr. Yu said. “I wanted to give them the runway to do what they want to do, which is eventually to own their own home.”

Mr. Boyd called his wife to tell her he had found a place for them. There were three bedrooms and a front yard where they could grow a garden; there was the backyard with a parking spot and room for a grill.

When they told the landlord that they loved the place but couldn’t afford it, he lowered the rent by $200. “He listened to our needs,” Ms. Nakazawa said. “He’s just been wonderful.”

They moved in a few weeks later.

$2,800 | East Elmhurst, Queens

Natalia Nakazawa, 40; Patrick Boyd, 43

Occupations: Ms. Nakazawa is an artist, educator, and arts administrator; Mr. Boyd is a software engineer.

New Commission: Ms. Nakazawa, who maintains a work studio in Long Island City, was recently commissioned to complete a public arts project at the Jackson Heights Library. “I’m thinking of a ceramic mural,” she said.

On Renting a House: “The ability to be here without having to come up with a down payment and take on a million-dollar mortgage is a big deal,” Ms. Nakazawa said. Recalling how Hurricane Ida flooded so many basements on their block in 2021, Mr. Boyd added, “Sure we don’t gain equity, but we’re also shielded from a tremendous amount of risk.”

It was December of 2019, just before the pandemic. They watched lots of friends “cut and run” from the city, but the house made it possible for them to stay.

They planted a garden and had adventures along the block, searching out edible plants and fruits — figs, concord grapes, pepper grass. “This became a place where we could remember, ‘Oh, nature exists,’” Ms. Nakazawa said. “For Kai, it’s been great. In the summer if he’s feeling cooped up inside, we can go outside and play with the hose.”

Both of the immediate neighbors have children. Kai has his friends, new and old, in the aboveground pool in his backyard.

Just beyond the backyard there’s a private alleyway, shared and maintained by everyone on the block. “It’s enclosed so it’s completely safe,” Ms. Nakazawa said. “The kids can ride their bikes around, play basketball. This actually feels like being part of a community — very safe and very good. It’s like Sesame Street,” she added, laughing. “Or an old Italian village where everyone is putting out their laundry.”

The house has made her appreciate access to a sun-splashed laundry line, something that reminds her of visits to her grandmother: “I think of my abuela in Uruguay because she always put clothes up on a line on her roof. Laundry lines are amazing — they’re super important.”

Back at the co-op, Kai could only play his drums when they were stuffed with pillows so they didn’t make any noise. In East Elmhurst, he can pound away freely.

“In the co-op there was always this sort of invisible judgment,” Mr. Boyd said. “There was someone who was always watching you, and you’re always anxious about the rules which seem to be pretty subjective sometimes.”

Over the last few years, they’ve made the place their own. With the landlord’s blessing, Mr. Boyd built a custom kitchen island and extended the countertop next to the sink. They painted several of the rooms and hung new artwork.

In May, Ms. Nakazawa gave birth to their second son, Gael, upstairs in the couple’s bedroom. “I don’t want to rush out of this cocoon experience,” she said, with her 4-month-old in arms. “It’s so happy and so fulfilling, I don’t want to run out of it.”

The cocoon is easier to maintain in their family-friendly environment. “The neighbors here,” Mr. Boyd said, “it’s so nice to actually have relationships with them.”

So why was it that one of them knocked on his door that first day?

“Cookies,” Mr. Boyd said. “I couldn’t believe it. They wanted to give us cookies.”