[ad_1]
A few blocks from Parkchester's busy train station, residents can find a Starbucks, a hair salon, a hair salon and Latino restaurants. (Jonnelle Marte / The Washington Post)
NEW YORK – When Ali Ahmed does not run the convenience store that he owns in Queens, he cruises the city as an Uber driver.
Secondary work helps pay the mortgage and other bills on the house he's bought two years ago in the Parkchester neighborhood in the Bronx . Ahmed arrives to work and live in the 14th Congressional District of New York, which may soon elect the youngest woman in Congress: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Ahmed says that he works hard to get his bills paid and try to create a better financial base for his children. This is a fight that is strongly resonating among the voters here who propelled Ocasio-Cortez, 28, to victory last week in the Democratic primary on outgoing representative Joseph Crowley.
Their constituents are a mass of working families who are scrambling to make a good living in the shadow of the extreme prosperity in Manhattan. In Parkchester, New York natives with Italian or Puerto Rican roots live alongside people who have immigrated in recent decades from Ecuador, Mexico, Bangladesh and other parts of the globe. . Queens neighborhoods, including Jackson Heights, Astoria and Sunnyside, are also diverse.
[ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Democrat Who Contested The Establishment Of Her Party – And Won]
The District Offers A Window To Modernity. economy. The financial recovery of the last decade has supported some Americans who feel flush with rising home values and a steady rise in the stock market. Yet despite record unemployment across the country, those living on the fringes of a strong economy find that they work double time just to keep up.
Ahmed, 41, moved his family to the Bronx after more than 20 years Queens because the rent of his apartment in Astoria, an increasingly trendy neighborhood, was becoming too expensive.
The move made some things better and other things more complicated. He was a few minutes from his shop. Now it takes up to an hour to drive there. His bills are bigger as the owner. But his family has more space. There is a yard. And her children, a 4-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son, are happier.
"My family is comfortable here," he said, adding later that he thought it would be better for his children. the long term. "I want to educate my kids, I try to do my best," he said in a phone interview of the park while his kids were playing. "My hope is that I will do something better for them, so they can have a good career."
The business owner said that he noticed a trend among his friends and neighbors – many people move to more affordable places in New York. The professionals who work in Manhattan are moving into Queens while they're looking for lower rent. This change eliminates families and immigrants like him.
"For any one-bedroom apartment, there are 15 people who want to move in, so they are putting pressure on you," he said. He saw that many of his friends moved from Queens to the Bronx or outside of the state.
Living expenses also settle around him in the Bronx. A cousin looking for apartments in the area recently cited about $ 1,500 for a bedroom, Ahmed said. The congressional district that Ocasio-Cortez would represent if elected in November went from predominantly white in 1980 to almost 50 percent Hispanic, 17 percent Asian, and 23 percent white. in 2016, according to census figures.
Some of the residents have reached the milestones seen as staples of economic success in America, such as owning a home, sending a child to college and running a business. Others struggle more to make ends meet, working as waiters, drivers and cashiers.
For many, life is characterized by long journeys and even longer working days. The district has the fifth highest percentage of workers with jobs in the service sector of all congressional districts, including Washington, according to census data. He is seventh to have the longest average time of travel.
It is therefore not surprising that voters have been arrested by the Ocasio-Cortez Health Insurance Platform for all, free education and a minimum wage vital. 44, owns the Phase One hair salon in the Parkchester district of the Bronx. He said the neighborhood has become much more diverse since he left Harlem when he was a kid. (Jonnelle Marte / Washington Post)
In Parkchester, about 35 minutes by train north of Grand Central Terminal, people converse and do business in a mix of languages, including English, French, and English. Spanish and Bengali. On Starling Avenue, renamed Bangla Bazaar, a long-time pizzeria shares the street with a Bangladeshi restaurant and a halal meat shop.
A few blocks from Parkchester Station, residents can find a Starbucks, a Barber Shop, Hair Salon and Latino Restaurants. The sign "help requested" from a pharmacy on the window indicates that candidates must speak and write Spanish. A note on the awning, which labels the pharmacy in English and Spanish, says that the workers also speak "Bangla".
George Penn, owner of Phase One Hair Salon on Westchester Avenue, said the neighborhood has changed a lot since he's moved there from Harlem as a kid. He was a lot whiter. "There was a lot of racism," he said. But it fades as more and more blacks and Hispanics settle in the neighborhood – creating a more welcoming environment for his wife and his black and Puerto Rican children [19659020] Penn, 44 years old. to an influx of people from other boroughs who need an affordable place to live. "People come from Brooklyn, Harlem – they come to the Bronx," he said.
But many people living in the region feel rushed. "The only thing that's affordable here is the clothes," said Elsa Luna, 60, who moved to Parkchester from Ecuador two years ago to be close to her daughter and her two little ones girls
. Lively street with a Macy's, Marshall and other retailers. "Everything else is expensive," said Luna in Spanish
The family budget is tight because she's unable to work due to a back injury. But they spend time doing trips to the park and going to church. There are so many languages spoken in the neighborhood that it can be difficult to communicate.
"My neighbor is Indian, she likes me well and she knows that I like her, but we can not really tell us more than the" hello " Luna Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, winner of a Democratic congressional primary in New York, greets a passerby in the morning after bothering US Representative Joseph Crowley in Tuesday's elections. (Mark Lennihan / AP)
