Alexandra Marzella has lived with
more than 90 people over the last
decade in a six-bedroom loft in
Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her fi ve current
roommates also share the space
with her 2-year-old daughter, Earth,
who was born in the apartment’s
bathtub in 2020. Each roommate
pays between $1,000 and $1,300 in
rent each month, including utilities.10The newest arrivals to Alexandra’s
loft are Isis Lecaro, who moved
from Los Angeles, and Constance
Hutton, who moved from Wellington,
New Zealand. Each of them arrived
in early May.
After moving in last summer,
Madhulika Pesala says that she
anticipated some of the downsides
of being in New York more generally
— ‘‘Whenever it rains, my street
turns into a trash river’’ — but that
living with so many people was
an easy adjustment. Rose Curley,
who met Alexandra during their
time at the Rhode Island School of
Design, is nearing the end of
her six-month stay at the loft. She
says that as an autistic person,
she usually wears noise-canceling
headphones in the loft to help
with her sensory issues. But
she loves living with Earth. ‘‘Helping
to raise her, I feel like it’s just the
biggest compliment,’’ Rose says.
‘‘It’s the biggest gesture of like, ‘I
have faith in you.’ ’’ Another resident,
Alexandra Violet, who goes by Xan,
agrees, saying that Earth ‘‘can
be a real relief because she’s not
a roommate that’s not going to
have problems to dump on you or
something. She just wants to
hang out.’’
Having so many people in one
loft also off ers a sense of safety for
each resident.‘‘ Some tragic things
have happened while I’ve been here,
in Brooklyn and the larger city,’’ Rose
says. ‘‘I like having a sense that
there are people who will notice that
I haven’t come home.’’The New York Times Magazine P. 4 3