On a recent afternoon, 28-year-old Jenevieve Robertson shuffles through the doors of EZ-Pawn on West 181st Street, struggling to push a baby stroller with jammed wheels.

Through a slot under bulletproof glass, Robertson hands over a 14-karat gold necklace with a plate that reads “Jenny” – a keepsake she received from her husband a few months ago for her birthday. She says it is worth $120.

“I just needed to pawn,” she said as she leaves the shop, fighting with the stroller up West 181st Street. “I’m getting low.”

The transaction netted her just $40.

Robertson was hoping for more, but the cash will be enough to buy some Pampers and supplies for her baby and three other children waiting at home until her next paycheck. This month the cable bill was higher than expected and she went over her minutes on her cell phone.

By state law (and each state is different) Robertson will get at least four months to pay back her $40 loan. She will also have to pay three percent interest in addition to a service fee, which will amount to an extra $6. “Not bad,” she said.

If after the four months and an extra courtesy month expires Robertson is unable to pay back the loan or at least the interest, her birthday present will go up for sale, becoming part of the mosaic of merchandise that provide pawn shops their iconic look.

For many in Northern Manhattan, Robertson’s afternoon errand is a normal part of financing life, a buffer between unexpected problems while living paycheck to paycheck. It’s a fact that many pawnshop owners have capitalized on for years. Since an estimated 90 percent of customers pay back the loan, pawn shops profit off the interest. But in a souring economy, that’s a revenue stream that is likely to grow and could result in more pawn shops opening locally.

In October 2008, N.Y. Pawnbrokers, a chain with stores in the Bronx and the Lower East Side, opened on West 207th Street.

Across the storefront’s top in loud bright green letters framed by two fists full of money is one dramatically large word: “LOANS.”

Selling primarily electronics – a new product in a local market that tends to traffic in jewelry – the shop offers a free DVD with your first pawn. A wide selection of action movies and recent comedies are displayed on a back wall.

On St. Nicholas Avenue near West 177th Street, Ortega Jewelry, a watch shop in the neighborhood for over 30 years, has shut its doors. “Coming Soon: Gem Pawn brokers” reads a sign in the window. A behemoth of a company with 15 locations and over 60 years in the business will open up in the renovated location in three to four weeks.

Gem Mergers and Acquisitions officer Gilbert De La Rosa said Washington Heights has been on his radar for a long time.

“There’s a lot of people here who need our services,” he said.

In addition to the latest acquisition, Gem recently opened a store on West 148th Street and Broadway.

“Our Spanish customer base is 45 percent of our business,” said De La Rosa, a Dominican American who grew up on West 152nd Street. “We Spanish people like to buy jewelry when things are good and come here when things are bad.”

In the last four or five years there’s been an explosion of pawning in the jewelry stores of the neighborhood, according to Dennis Reeder, executive director of the Washington Heights and Inwood Development Corporation (WHIDC), a nonprofit that provides microloans.

“That speaks to the lending situation in the community,” he said.

Pawnshops serve a function in the community, he said, offering quick loans with little paperwork.

Rather than go to a bank, which requires multiple visits, applications and proof of financial records, the small mom and pop businesses Reeder works with utilize what are called prestamistas,, local loan sharks, who lend capital with few questions asked. But the downside is that interest rates are often much higher than a bank would offer and usually an owner’s business is put up for collateral.

“It’s very costly, but people who are not financially literate don’t notice that,” Reeder said.

Despite this, Reeder said, “Many people make up for that with a lot of hard work.”

Since they almost always require some sort of collateral for loans, prestamistas essentially become “walking pawnshops,” De La Rosa said. And because they operate outside of the law, there’s nothing stopping them from disappearing with your collateral, or using aggressive tactics to settle a non-binding agreement.

In response, Reeder said, WHIDC loans are modeled after the prestamistas, but they ask more questions, require more paperwork and offer much cheaper interest rates.

According to pawnshop owners, the business is primarily supported by a cast of recurring clients with fairly predictable patterns. After tax season, when the income tax checks come in, clients will pay back their loans and retrieve their jewelry. Then, before Mother’s Day, when they need cash, they’ll come right back and pawn those same items. Many of their customers, he said, are city employees paid once every two weeks (Robertson works for the Parks Department in the Bronx) and rotate their jewelry as a way to maintain cash-flow. De La Rosa mentioned one customer he knew who put her kids through college through pawning her jewelry to make tuition payments.

“When they come to pawn, they are very nice. But when they come to pay interest they get nasty, they call you a thief,” Pepe’s Joyeria owner Pepe Jacobo said.

According to De La Rosa, who’s been studying the local market for years, Jacobo, who owns multiple stores, was probably the first to start making loans.

Things started to get slow, Jacobo explained, so he simply started pawning.

Other jewelry stores in the neighborhood quickly followed.

A recent change in state law raising the maximum allowable interest rate from three percent to four percent may have helped bring other stores into pawning.

“I think I was the first one ... People like to copy,” Jacobo said, giving himself a spritz of cologne on his neck.

Jacobo’s success with pawning comes from his good name in the community, he said – people can trust him. He gives his clients seven to eight months to pay back their loans instead of the minimum four months required by law. About 70 percent of his revenue pays the rent.

“At the beginning, it was a little depressing,” he said. “Now it’s a business.”

But De La Rosa predicts jewelry pawning will be hit by the economic downturn as well. With the price of gold higher than before, sales are much lower than pawns.

“People have to buy jewelry to pawn,” De La Rosa said.

He also said the number of customers defaulting on their loans is increasing. Jacobo also said fewer customers are repaying their loans, only about 70 to 75 percent compared to what is typically over 85 percent.

“If it’s rent versus the chain, there goes the chain,” De La Rosa said.

New stories from around the country are reporting more pawns from the upper and middle class, people who wouldn’t normally pawn. The Wall Street Journal reported that publicly traded pawn companies in the market are some of the few currently seeing growth.

But Jacobo said he’s not seeing any new faces.

“Maybe in the white community,” he said. “But in the Hispanic community, they always need cash.”