The Poconos-to-New York commuter comes in many forms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the white-collar worker taking advantage of the work-from-home revolution to try exurban living. There\u2019s the yawning immigrant day laborer arriving at the George Washington Bridge before dawn to start looking for a gig. And there\u2019s the blue-collar worker \u2014 the civil servant, the medic, the union porter or electrician or laborer \u2014 who, priced out of the five boroughs and their immediate suburbs, is forced to venture westward for their slice of the American Dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A recently renovated 1,383 square-foot three-bed, two-bath ranch-style home on an acre of land in East Stroudsburg is currently listed for $315,000<\/a>; a comparatively sized ranch on Staten Island<\/a> \u2014 the borough with the largest concentration of civil servants \u2014 is going for more than twice as much, at $760,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yes, there is the peace and quiet and bucolic scenery and the space. But for many former New Yorkers the decision boils down to economics: their New York City salaries stretch much farther two hours away.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a dynamic that has long vexed New York\u2019s labor leaders. New York City has residency requirements for most civil servant jobs, though they vary by job title, status and agency. Workers in some jobs designated as \u201chard-to-recruit,\u201d like those in the Emergency Medical Services, are not required to live in the city<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthony Almojera, the president of Local 3621, which represents EMS officers, was unable to provide specifics, only that a considerable share of his members live in Pennsylvania \u2014 and even as far as Delaware.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat kind of society are we that the people who are specifically here to help us in our time of need, cannot afford to live in New York City, the city that they work for?\u201d he said. \u201cThe sacrifice that is made by these people is tremendous. The only place to afford to live as a New York City FDNY EMT is Pennsylvania? That\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Real estate companies make direct appeals<\/a> to home buyers from New York and New Jersey. There have been talks for decades of reopening an abandoned passenger rail line<\/a> connecting Scranton to New York City via East Stroudsburg. There is a cottage industry<\/a> of bus and van companies connecting Poconos commuters via the George Washington Bridge bus terminal.<\/p>\n A Taste of the Old Neighborhood<\/p>\n Some former New Yorkers who moved to Monroe County in recent years say that, in some respects, it feels like they never left. One construction worker notes that all of his neighbors are New Yorkers \u2014 Puerto Rican, Dominican and Haitian families from The Bronx<\/a> and Brooklyn; one is a cabbie. Gomez often meets with two fellow members of his union, Local 3621 of the Uniformed EMS Officers Union, to kill time at a local shooting range.<\/p>\n Today, nearly 40% of East Stroudsburg\u2019s population is Black or Latino, according to the Census<\/a>. The town\u2019s share of Black residents (20%) is nearly identical to that of New York (21.9%). Over the decades, the schools went from being \u201c90% white, to now they\u2019re about 50\/50,\u201d according to Kelly Lewis, the town\u2019s borough manager. Lewis, a Republican former state lawmaker and 12th-generation Stroudsburger, takes pride in his hometown\u2019s transformation. \u201cWe have a very diverse population now.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the region\u2019s growing diversity, several former New Yorkers shared shared stories depicting a mixed reception.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dorothy Leconte, a yellow cab driver, recalled an incident 15 years ago at a Home Depot parking lot near her East Stroudsburg home. She went to the store to pick up a few things and when she returned to her parked cab, she found a handwritten note that read \u201cGet your ass back to New York. There\u2019s no place for you here.\u201d Leconte, who is from Haiti, said her son also experienced racist bullying as a child in East Stroudsburg\u2019s elementary schools in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n \u2018I Wanted to Cut My Wrists\u2019<\/p>\n The commute to and from the Poconos has<\/a> consistently<\/a> ranked<\/a> among the worst in the country \u2014 made worse, as was the case last year, when a series of massive sinkholes<\/a> opened in sections located in Morris County, NJ, stretching commute times on I-80 by an hour in both directions for months as repairs were underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n One worker at a NYC social services agency described the ensuing five-hour roundtrip traffic: \u201cI wanted to cut my wrists and bleed out.\u201d<\/p>\n But The City Reporter spoke to more than a dozen people who feel having peace, quiet and a home they can afford is still worth the long commute.<\/p>\n Gomez, the EMS lieutenant, grew up in Throggs Neck. He and his wife, a fellow Bronxite, tried buying a home in the borough in the mid 1990s but the newlyweds discovered they were priced out \u2014 not just from The Bronx, but from\u00a0 Long Island and Westchester, too. They bought their two-level East Stroudsburg home in 1997 for a fraction of an equivalent home in the New York metro area. He\u2019s lived in Pennsylvania for nearly his entire three-decade career in New York City\u2019s emergency medical services.<\/p>\n Gomez is just one of many New York EMS technicians and paramedics, who receive the lowest pay<\/a> among the city\u2019s first responders, to have made a home in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Winslow Luna Jr., a paramedic, moved to East Stroudsburg in 2019 following in the footsteps of his own parents, who made the jump a few years prior and still work in New York.<\/p>\n A New Life<\/p>\n Luna, 35, grew up in the Woodside Houses in Queens and said he wanted more for his young family.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a bullet that missed my head when I was sleeping there, like about eight years old, and the hole was still on the wall when I left that apartment,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He married his high school sweetheart, a fellow FDNY paramedic, and they closed on their 2,700 square-foot two-story house in October 2019 for $198,000, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI remember I used to get jumped like every two weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy growing up over there. I didn\u2019t want that for my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n New Yorkers arrived in the Poconos in three major waves. There was the COVID bump at the beginning of this decade, and a post-9\/11 wave exacerbated by what became the subprime mortgage crisis. But the first New Yorkers<\/a> arrived in the mid- to late-1970s, after the completion of Interstate 80, a period that coincided with the city\u2019s near-bankruptcy and an exodus of white New Yorkers to the suburbs.<\/p>\n Lewis, the East Stroudsburg borough manager, remembers the sudden arrival of new kids around 1977, when he was in middle school. These kids spoke differently, wore trendier clothes and talked nonstop about basketball, while the town kids worshipped football.<\/p>\n \u201cThey started showing up in our seventh or eighth grade classes,\u201d said Lewis. \u201cThey said they came from New York, but they definitely just dressed differently, brought the trends with them.\u201d The accents and the last names \u2014 at the time, predominantly Italian \u2014 were another giveaway, he recalled.<\/p>\n The population exploded, such that there are now two public high schools \u2014 though football is still king, as it was in Lewis\u2019 boyhood. The East Stroudsburg South Cavaliers<\/a> were the division champs in 2024 and are hoping to come back this year after a disappointing 2025 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the late 1990s and early 2000s, another crop of first-time home buyers \u2014 many of them Black and Latino \u2014 from New York looked to the Poconos to settle their roots. (Anecdotally, some locals and real-estate professionals say the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center aided this second wave.) Flocks of New York City civil servants and blue-collar workers were duped<\/a> into buying spacious houses for a bargain compared to city prices \u2014 only to later learn their home\u2019s value had been wildly inflated, making them victims of a vast fraud described in a 2003 City Limits article<\/a> as a \u201creal-estate\u2013scam hell.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The result was devastating: Even before the national real estate bubble burst in 2008, one in five homes in Monroe County, at the heart of the Poconos, were in foreclosure, according to a 2004 study<\/a> commissioned by two Pennsylvania state agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a desperate time,\u201d said Lewis.<\/p>\n \u2018Everything\u2019s Cheaper\u2019<\/p>\n Slowly the region began to rebuild. Today, East Stroudsburg property values for the first time surpassed pre-2007 levels, according to Lewis. There is a flurry of new construction for the first time in decades: Pocono Township approved plans to build hundreds of new townhomes earlier this year, and East Stroudsburg has conversion proposals for 40 homes. Amid all the development, the biggest controversy is a plan to dot the region with data centers, including two 125,000 sq-ft facilities<\/a> in East Stroudsburg.<\/p>\n East Stroudsburg\u2019s main downtown strip is dotted with pubs, boutiques, brunchy caf\u00e9s, and Dominican and Jamaican lunch counters. (On a recent afternoon, Gomez\u2019s wife, a self-described foodie, regaled visitors with local restaurant recommendations and served Argentine alfajores and other cookies from a nearby bakery.)<\/p>\n COVID brought on another wave of home-buyers, says local realtor Cindy Lecht, and the region\u2019s low inventory has caused home prices to surge. According to Redfin<\/a>, the real estate firm, the median home price in Monroe County this summer rose 11.9% compared to last year, to $346,000.<\/p>\n Lecht, a second-generation realtor in the Poconos, has said that New Jerseyans and New Yorkers have long provided reliable clientele in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cI think people come out here looking for the same things: everything\u2019s cheaper, taxes-wise, car insurance is cheaper, and they are able to get a large home for a very reasonable price without having to think too much in terms of school or property tax,\u201d says Lecht.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re literally an hour and a half from Manhattan, so we\u2019re not that bad of a drive,\u201d she adds. \u201cFor people who have a family that is growing, I can imagine these are all reasons why they come to our area.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"East](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/081426_east_stroudsburg-5.jpg\")
Towns like East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, offer New Yorkers a slice of Main Street American living, with lower taxes, cheaper homes, and a brutal commute to jobs in the Big Apple. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporte<\/p>\n![\"FDNY](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/101326_alex_gomez_harlem_hospital-3.jpg\")
EMS Lt. Alex Gomez crashes out in a sleeping bag in the passenger\u2019s seat of his SUV at Harlem Hospital, where he\u2019s been sleeping for decades instead of making the long commute back to Pennsylvania each night, Oct, 12, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporter<\/p>\n![\"FDNY](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/081426_east_stroudsburg-8.jpg\")
FDNY Paramedic Winslow Luna grew up in the Woodside Houses in Queens. He commutes from East Stroudsburg, Pa., to New York on his Suzuki motorcycle, paying lower tolls and congestion pricing fees than four-wheeled commuters, Aug. 14, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporter<\/p>\n![\"East](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/081426_east_stroudsburg-2.jpg\")
East Stroudsburg Borough Manager Kelly Lewis recalled the first wave of New York transplants in the 1970s. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporter<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/081426_east_stroudsburg-10.jpg\")
EMS Lt. Alex Gomez found a home he could afford in in East Stroudsburg, Pa., where he\u2019s lived for decades. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/The City Reporter<\/p>\n