For Selvin Pogoada, arriving in New York City in 2022 marked the end of a difficult chapter, after having fled Honduras to seek asylum in the United States. It also marked the beginning of new opportunities for him. In New York, he found work as a construction day laborer earning $800 a week. But the job proved unsteady and he would sometimes go weeks without work. To make ends meet, he began delivering food for Uber Eats, working 12-hour shifts.
But even with the extra delivery work, he could not make enough to live, the 40-year-old told Documented in Spanish. As rent and other costs of living mounted, Pogoada struggled to keep up. “To survive a month in New York… I would rent [a shared apartment] in Chinatown so that it would be cheaper for me,” he said. “That was about $600 to $800 dollars a month, plus about $250 or $300 dollars on food.” At one point when he did not have enough money for rent, he was kicked out and had to look for housing in one of New York City’s shelters.
In July of 2024 a friend told him about steadier construction work in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Pogoada decided to leave the city. “The rent [in Pennsylvania] is much cheaper because it’s a town, not such a big city,” he said. There, he rents a room for $600 including utilities and it is larger than the one he rented in Chinatown…