This is part of a series about New Yorkers who have recently relocated to the Bronx. It’s called The New Bronx.

It was 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and Jason Nunez, 33, was just getting off his double shift as a doorman and porter in a Midtown West high-rise apartment building. He folded his khaki uniform and changed into a basketball jersey before making his 40-minute trip home to the Bronx.

He used to live closer, in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, with his parents, until he got married four years ago and needed a place for his new family. The Bronx was affordable, if not completely desirable.

And now, ever since his parents lost their Washington Heights rent-controlled apartment in March, his entire family lives together in a $971-a-month three-bedroom apartment in Mount Hope neighborhood of the Bronx. The longer commute and the more crowded conditions are worth it, he figures.

“It’s basically my goal to save money, move on and get something of my own,” he said, adding that his main concern is to provide a safer place for his 3-year-old son Mason to live and learn.

For 28 years since birth, Nunez had lived with his parents in a two-bedroom apartment on 171st Street and Haven Avenue in Upper Manhattan. He recalls being happy as a kid in their first-floor, rent-controlled home across from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, a neighborhood full of Puerto Rican and Cuban families. The rent started at $200 per month in 1978 and climbed only $20 every year.

Shortly after Nunez married Mariana, 27, in 2011, the newly weds moved into a spacious two-bedroom on 183rd Street and the Grand Concourse in Fordham Heights, the Bronx, where the rent was reasonable at $1,400. On Valentine’s Day the following year, Mason was born.

With ready access to several supermarkets, a nearby subway station, and the bustling commercial Fordham Road business section, “it felt like home instantly,” said Nunez. He was put off by the numbers of panhandlers on the street, and other things “he wasn’t used to.”

Then one summer night in 2013 an incident occurred that drove the Nunez’s off the block. Gunshots were fired in the Slattery Playground on the corner of 183rd Street and Ryer Avenue, right across from their home. Soon thereafter his parents lost their Manhattan apartment. The landlord offered them $140,000 to move out, so he could put it on the market. Nunez’s parents decided to take over another rent-controlled apartment on East Tremont Avenue near the Grand Concourse, once occupied by relatives.

In this three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Mount Hope, the Bronx, Nunez’s family is sharing space with his parents temporarily, before they can make a more desirable living arrangement. He earns a similar annual income as his wife, Mariana, who works as a housekeeper at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.

“I’m planning on saving up so that I can get my own house, most likely in New Jersey,” said Nunez. “It’s going to take two or three years. Max is four.”