NEW YORK - Nearly a year ago, NY1 first introduced you to a family of five living in a Manhattan studio.

It was tough then. It’s even harder now with coronavirus.

Imagine being cooped up, five people in a studio apartment while being told to stay home.

“It’s getting worse and worse,” Abbas Chouman told NY1 News.

Staying in and safe from the coronavirus for Chouman doesn’t feel safe and sound.

“We’re fighting, we’re screaming at each other anybody move do this,” explained Chouman.

“Everybody’s in my face all the time. I don’t have no privacy,” said his wife Souraya Chouman.

The couple has three kids, two in high school and one in college.

The apartment they live in is a 400 square foot ground floor studio in Chelsea. That amounts to a box 20 feet by 20 feet. Add the furniture and finding six feet for social distance from each other to avoid the spread of COVID-19 is a distant dream.

“You’ve been in this apartment,” Abbas told NY1’s Michael Herzenberg over a zoom call. "And you know how big it is.  We cannot stay away from each other.”

 

“We’re like so compact next to each other, I don’t know cause we can have the virus we don’t know that,” worried their son Ibrahim.

So far they’ve been healthy but in addition to distance learning the boys work in a grocery store.  They're now putting in 35 to 40 hours a week stocking shelves.

“When I come back from work, I have to shower right away I don’t want my parents to get sick,” younger son Adam told NY1.

“If he’s working, the other one is not,” said their mother, Souraya.

“We depend on Adam’s and Ibrahim’s income to pay the rent right now,” said Abbas.

The rent: $1,350 a month includes electricity. Abbas gets a disability check and his wife was just laid off as a chef and is now on unemployment. The government checks amount to about $2,000 a month. It's not enough they say to move to a bigger place. 

Abbas says he's entered the city's affordable housing lottery for years, was selected once for a larger new apartment on West 57th Street, but declined when the city set the rent at what he thought was too much money.

Getting picked and qualifying for another one he says is the only option when you count food and supplies.  Something they’ve been stocking up on, as much as they can.

“For me it’s distressing because I don’t have no space to put all the stuff I buy from the supermarket,” said Souraya.

“So there’s a lot of things that we didn’t buy because we didn’t have room in the apartment,” said Abbas.

“It’s a good thing your kids work at a grocery store … Paper towels and toilet paper, they get first dibs,” said Michael Herzenberg.

“Yeah.  That’s something I can appreciate for now,” Abbas said laughing.