The New York Times, Oct 23, 2019: Underground Lives: The Sunless World Of Immigrants In Queens
In New York, hope sometimes comes at the price of the sun.
The city welcomes poor immigrants, but its housing does not. Most rents are far beyond the means of people like Amado, who arrive looking for a better life or to make money to send back home.
So they turn to the basements of Queens.
Underneath the borough lives a shadow city of illegal apartments, shielded from the light.
Owners of one- and two-family homes have carved up their basements into makeshift dorms, illicitly constructed with narrow hallways, windowless bedrooms, shaky walls and electrical wiring strung together like knotted shoelaces. There is no accurate count of how many exist, but estimates are in the tens of thousands.
