From left: Alex Palacios, Ayomide Enitan and Carlton Bruce.Ayomide Enitan, Carlton Bruce and
Alex Palacios live in a four-bedroom
apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
They have a fourth roommate who
they say hasn’t lived in the apartment
for the last six months beyond
occasionally stopping by to pick
up his mail.
9After Ayomide, who goes
by Ayo, moved to New York from
Lagos, Nigeria, in January to
get his master’s degree in public
health from New York University,
he checked into a hotel in
Hell’s Kitchen and began looking
for an apartment. Several weeks
and about 10 apartment visits later,
he settled on one that he
found on Craigslist. ‘‘I was a bit
desperate,’’ Ayo says.
He ended up moving in
with CJ — as Carlton, who has
lived in the apartment since January
2019, is known — and the
two roommates were soon joined
by Alex, a 21-year-old N.Y.U. student.
Housing has always been a worry
for Alex. Growing up in East Boston,
he says that his rough relationship
with his mother pushed him to
run away from home when he was
- Though he attended a private
school on scholarship, he still
had to fi nd places to stay during
school breaks. Moving to
New York, he bounced from his
dorm to rooms in Prospect Le erts
Gardens, Midtown and Harlem
before landing in Bed-Stuy.
‘‘That just really put into my mind
how unstable housing can be,’’
he says, ‘‘and how housing is used
as a weapon to both keep people
in abusive relationships, but then
also to keep them working.’’ He
adds, ‘‘This is not a space issue; this
is not a lack of resources; this is an
issue of power.’’
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