While his stepson Johnny naps, Rico Bicoy continues to pack and prepare for the family's move while his 3-year-old daughter, Kazaiyah-Rose Bicoy carries a pink blanket. Logan Mock-Bunting for Al Jazeera America

LANAI CITY, Hawaii — A punishing Hawaiian sun rises on the first day of the final week in which Lilinoe Bicoy, 33, and her family of seven will share the same simple, plantation-style cottage.

Friends and relatives file in and out of the sea-foam green garage, fists full of furniture legs and fishing poles to load onto truck beds. Whatever remains will go to the thrift store down the red-dusted road, one of the island of Lanai’s three main strips of pavement.

“Everything’s free, everything’s got to go,” Bicoy says. A pit bull named Bossy sits obediently at her tattooed feet, panting in the heat and dust.

The three-bedroom home Bicoy and her family must vacate was owned by Bicoy’s parents until they divorced and sold it two days after Christmas. Bicoy, a nursing student and mother of five, and her husband, who works construction, say they cannot afford any of the available rental houses on the island, which their family has lived on for four generations.

A flyer at the local grocery advertises a tin-roofed bungalow with three bedrooms for $2,495 monthly. Another heralds a boxy, two-bedroom unit for $2,300. On Lanai, the average annual per capita income is less than $22,000.