“The city is hard enough; having a baby on your own is hard enough. Living here, it’s like, ‘Press the easy button and there you go,’” said Ms. McDonagh, who moved into a first-floor two-bedroom apartment at Gateway Plaza when she was seven months pregnant with her daughter, Gemma.

The rental complex is “tailor-made for families,” she said, enumerating the many family-focused perks of the 1980s waterfront complex: numerous children’s events (most recently, a Halloween party); walled-in lawns to stop wayward tots from running off; a set-back-from-the-street, parklike setting. Even a swimming pool overlooking the Hudson.

And then there is the informal mom network.

Many of the mothers at the complex work outside the home like she does, said Ms. McDonagh, who is in digital ad sales. So they help each other out with emergency babysitting, impromptu play dates during bad weather and camaraderie that often takes the form of hanging out on the lawn, catching up as they watch their children play.

“We have a WhatsApp group chat and after work, we’ll be like, ‘Wine, lawn? Yes,’” she said.

The tight-knit community is all the more helpful as her own family lives out of state.

“I had wanted to try living someplace different than where I grew up,” recalled Ms. McDonagh, who is originally from Chicago and moved to New York after college. “I thought I’d be here maybe five years. That went by in a flash. Then it was 10 years.”