For a while, kitchen table conversations in Emilio Lora’s household were tense. “We used to discuss it every day,” Mr. Lora, 19, said of his parents’ financial hardship. “It was a really big problem.”

His father, Raymond Mercedes, 47, had been an electrician at an oil refinery in St. Croix, where the family lived for seven years after moving from the Dominican Republic. But Mr. Mercedes was laid off, and a year and a half ago he decided “to start over, to start a new life, especially for me,” Mr. Lora said.