The Freedom of an Escape From Venezuela and the Loneliness That Followed

Jackson Villamarin Villegas moved into a third-floor walk-up apartment in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn in March. An immigrant from Venezuela, he shares the small room — and splits the $850 per month rent, plus utilities — with another migrant from his country.

His landlord also lives in the apartment, sleeping behind a curtain in the living room.

The room is “big enough for what I have,” said Mr. Villamarin, 42. Leonardo Uzcategui, founder and chief executive of Fundavenyc, a nonprofit group which provides assistance to Spanish-speaking New Yorkers, translated his words to English.

The space “feels good,” but Mr. Villamarin would still like another place that’s “bigger and more comfortable,” he added.

Mr. Villamarin is among the more than 150,100 migrants who made their way to New York City between the spring of 2022 and the start of December 2023 — a surge Mayor Eric Adams described as a humanitarian crisis and estimated could cost the city about $12 billion over three years.

He has applied for asylum now that he is in the United States. According to his asylum application, the Venezuelan government threatened his life, and because of his anti-government political activism, he was detained for 32 days in prison.