The rats scurried into the shed. Flinching at the sound of a horde of tiny claws scratching at the ground, Migdalia Mass Llorens kept vigil over her sleeping family huddled together under a single blanket. The 35-year-old mother of three couldn’t bring herself to join her kids in peaceful slumber. The hard floor and the rodents were bad enough. There was also the sinking awareness that her family may no longer have a home to return to that kept her up well into the night.

It was late September 2017, and Hurricane Maria had just roared through Puerto Rico. The catastrophic storm came just weeks after Hurricane Irma swept through the archipelago. When Maria hit, the family was sheltering inside their wooden house, which they had tied down with wire cables in the hopes it would hold. But the

See Full Page