It all started when I returned home from California after graduating from college, USC, the University of Southern California. After losing her job, all that my mother could afford, she moved to a cheaper place in a rundown neighborhood. With rents sky high, my mother, Gloria, my sister, Carol, and my aunt, Kathy, were crammed in a small, two-bedroom house with one bathroom. Afraid to leave her house because of all of the crime around her, and with COVID still on the rise, she sheltered in place and had everything she needed delivered.

Because the house had been in foreclosure and was a bank takeover, she rented it from the...