For nearly five years, from 2000 to 2005, Vera Jackson drove every workday from her home on a well-manicured Elk Grove street to the hair salon she owned and operated in Sunnyvale.

It was a price she thought worth paying to own her own home, an unattainable goal in the pricey Bay Area. On the commute, she often brought along her father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and needed looking after. The pair slept at a motel in Sunnyvale when she was too tired to drive.

“I wanted the American dream,” Jackson said.

Now, 10 years after moving to Elk Grove, Jackson is like millions of other Americans buried by the subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing recession: She’s fighting to keep her home.