Ms. Acosta, who is divorced and works in Manhattan as a personal assistant, shares the snug ground-floor unit with her two sons, Derek, who is 12, and JanPaul, 5.  The second floor is home to Ms. Acosta’s older sister, Jacqueline Andrade, who works as a nanny, and Jacqueline’s husband, Diego, who installs hardwood floors, as well as their daughter, Fernanda, 16.  On the top floor live Ms. Acosta’s older brother, Luis Garcia, a warehouse supervisor, along with his wife, Alexandra, a former day care worker, and their 14-year-old son, Calvin.  Even siblings besotted with one another might think twice about choosing to spend their days and nights under a single smallish roof. But for these three grown children, Ecuadorean immigrants raised largely in a one-bedroom apartment near Fordham Road in the Bronx, the arrangement offered an escape from cramped quarters in a troubled part of the city.  The three had long talked about buying a place together. Yet only when they discovered this century-old house opposite Forest Park seven years ago did they realize they had found something both large enough for them all and priced at a level they could afford.  “We’d been looking for a year,” Ms. Acosta said. “The day we saw this house, we had already seen seven other places. This was the last one.”  They bought the house for $400,000, dividing the down payment equally among the three families. And the sharing continues. On the 15th of each month Ms. Andrade takes a check for the mortgage to the bank. Mr. Garcia makes sure the taxes are paid. Ms. Acosta administers to the sometimes temperamental boiler, a task she is proud to say she mastered on her own.  A strict schedule spells out who is responsible for sorting the recyclables (Mr. Garcia in January, Ms. Andrade in February, Ms. Acosta in March and so on). The three take turns shoveling the snow and raking the leaves. When it comes to tending the small front garden, a task that includes decorating for Christmas, everyone pitches in, including the children.  Once in a while something goes wrong, memorably the time Ms. Andrade forgot to make the mortgage payment, and her brother had to rush a check to the bank just minutes before it closed.  And togetherness can have a downside.  “You know everyone’s schedule,” Ms. Acosta said. “You lack a certain privacy.” A family member tiptoeing home late at night can expect pointed questions the next morning.  “On the other hand,” Ms. Acosta said, “if there’s a problem, like somebody’s making too much noise, it’s a lot easier to sort it out with a relative. And with the children, it’s so much more secure not having strangers in the building.”  Certain shared practices have assumed the quality of rituals. When Hilda Perez, the mother of the three adult siblings, telephones from Ecuador, where she now lives (their father died in 2001), everyone hurries to Ms. Andrade’s apartment to talk to her on speakerphone.  And did we mention the parties? The two teenagers, Calvin and Fernanda, have back-to-back July birthdays, so that celebration is always a big event. But really, any excuse will do.  “We celebrate everything, and I mean everything,” Ms. Acosta said. “Ecuadoreans just love parties.”  Especially in good weather, the festivities take place in the concrete yard behind the house, generally on a Saturday night. Tables and chairs are dragged out, and everyone pitches in to grill the pork ribs and skirt steak. The adults play cards, and the loser gets dumped in the inflatable pool.  Ms. Acosta, at 32 the baby of the family, has the smallest of the three units, the one with the lowest ceilings and the least light. Yet thanks to the generous use of mirrors and colors as bright as a sunburst, the spaces seem cheerful and comfortable.  In the living area, a mirrored wall that hides the washer and dryer doubles the apparent size of the space; a wall-sized mirror works similar magic in Ms. Acosta’s bedroom. Walls, rugs and curtains are a medley of rust, tangerine and pale pink. Real flowers would struggle to thrive here, but bouquets of artificial ones bloom everywhere.  Along with family memorabilia, including an image of JanPaul’s sonogram and a photograph of Derek suited up for his kindergarten graduation in a royal blue cap and gown, Ms. Acosta’s apartment is rich in religious artifacts.  Derek serves as an altar boy at nearby Holy Child Jesus Church; his brother hopes to follow his footsteps, and the room they share has ecclesiastical touches mixed in with the predictable guy stuff. Along with Derek’s Thomas the Tank Engine bedspread and the gold-colored belt he won for wrestling, there are silvery crosses on the wall and, on a table, JanPaul’s children’s Bible, with a rainbow on the cover.  The most beguiling religious display is the array of porcelain statues of the Virgin Mary, several of which come from Ecuador. They stand in a corner cabinet in the living room, and each year Ms. Acosta sews new outfits for them, sometimes using shiny gold rickrack. She also has an assortment of Baby Jesuses, five plastic infants that she brings out every Christmas and arranges in a Nativity scene.  One of the statues of the Virgin Mary, which Ms. Acosta has draped with wooden rosary beads, was found outside her old Bronx apartment. “I was standing on the street and I just saw it there in the garbage,” she said. “I could hear it calling me.”  The figures are charming, as are the sun-splashed furnishings, but Ms. Acosta’s most treasured piece of décor is a small framed drawing in black crayon that hangs in the narrow hallway.  “I tell people this is by a famous person,” she says with a smile. In fact, the artist is her son Derek, and the praise makes him squirm.  “You just say you like the drawing because I’m the one who made it,” he says.  To which Ms. Acosta replies: “It’s my apartment. I can do what I want. And besides, I really love it.”
Jennifer Acosta lives in the ground-floor unit in Woodhaven, while her older sister and brother live on the top floors.