FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

Grandma’s house is more than real estate.

It is memory. It is legacy.

It is culture. It is HOME.

Stop Selling Grandma’s House is a documentary about Black and Brown families navigating what happens when the homes passed down to them become increasingly difficult to keep.

SUPPORT US ON

Support

The Film

A family home can hold generations of memory, identity, culture, and wealth.

Stop Selling Grandma’s House follows Oakland and East Bay families navigating the complicated realities of inherited property. Some are deciding whether to sell. Some are fighting to stay. Others have already lost their family homes and are living with what comes next.

Through intimate personal stories, the film examines the forces behind the loss of family homes, from gentrification and rising costs to probate, property taxes, investor pressure, and longstanding housing inequities.

At its heart, the film asks:

What happens when the home you inherited becomes too difficult to keep?

The People

At the center of the film are Oakland and East Bay residents living through very different versions of the same question:

Can we keep Grandma’s house?

Their stories include inheritance, family conflict, legal battles, loss, resistance, and, in some cases, preservation.

Together, they reveal that the loss of a family home is rarely just about a house.

Oakland

MORE THAN A SETTING. A MAIN CHARACTER.

Oakland is the heartbeat of Stop Selling Grandma’s House.

A city shaped by Black culture, community organizing, creativity, and resistance, Oakland is also experiencing profound displacement and transformation.

Between 1990 and 2015, Oakland’s Black population declined by 25%, from 163,526 to 106,302.

Across the Bay Area, the story continues. Between 2010 and 2020, the region lost more than 5,000 Black owner-occupied households, with particularly significant losses in historically Black communities in Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Solano County.

The neighborhoods featured in the film carry the history of generations while their streets, homes, and communities continue to change.

Through Oakland, the film asks:

Who gets to stay?
Who gets to inherit?

Who gets to build wealth?
And whose history gets to remain?

Oakland is not simply where this story happens.

Oakland is part of the story.

The Bigger Story

THIS IS BIGGER THAN ONE HOUSE.

The loss of family homes is connected to a much longer history of housing inequality.

For generations, Black families have faced barriers to homeownership and wealth building through discriminatory housing policies, redlining, lending discrimination, displacement, and unequal access to capital.

Today, those inequities intersect with gentrification, rising property values, property taxes, probate complications, investor activity, and the lasting effects of the foreclosure crisis.

The Numbers

Why
“Grandma's House” ?

Grandma’s house is not just a house.

It is where generations gather. Where stories are passed down. Where traditions live. Where family history has a physical address.

For many families, it can also represent one of the most significant forms of generational wealth they will ever inherit.

But what happens when that legacy becomes difficult to protect?

What are we carrying forward, and what are we being asked to give up?

THE FILMMAKER

A PERSONAL STORY

Stop Selling Grandma’s House began with director Sharíck LaMay Gums’ experience losing her grandmother and great-grandmother’s properties in Oakland and Berkeley.

Her grandmother, Anita, was a community leader, organizer, and the center of the family. Her home was the heartbeat of their family, where generations gathered, stories were passed down, and traditions were kept alive.

That loss revealed how fragile generational legacy can be when families are forced to navigate complicated systems surrounding housing, inheritance, and wealth.

What began as a personal loss became a larger question:

How many other families are facing the same thing?

Sharíck brings a background in unscripted television, documentary, branded content, and production to her feature documentary directorial debut.

THE FILMMAKING

Stop Selling Grandma’s House combines intimate interviews and vérité storytelling with the larger history of housing and displacement.

Family photographs, home videos, archival material, neighborhood imagery, and contemporary footage connect personal memory to the changing landscape of Oakland.

The result is a character-driven film that is both deeply personal and part of a much larger conversation about housing, wealth, identity, and belonging.

CURRENTLY IN POST-PRODUCTION

In 2025, we screened an early, shorter draft of Stop Selling Grandma’s House at the Emeryville Film Festival, where we received valuable audience engagement, feedback and further clarity around the story’s potential.

Since then, we have expanded the project from a shorter documentary format into a feature-length film. This expanded format allows us to deepen the participants’ stories and incorporate important additional elements, including archival material, expanded interviews, additional vérité footage, sound design, original music, color, and final finishing.

We are currently refining the feature in post-production and raising finishing funds to complete these essential elements and bring the film to its full potential.

TARGET: FESTIVAL & DISTRIBUTION LAUNCH — 2027

SUPPORT US ON

BEYOND THE FILM

THE STORY DOESN’T END WHEN THE CREDITS ROLL.

Stop Selling Grandma’s House is being built to spark conversations beyond the screen through community screenings, educational resources, and partnerships focused on housing, inheritance, generational wealth, and cultural preservation.

The goal isn't simply to tell families “don't sell.”

Sometimes selling is the only option.

The goal is to encourage families to slow down, understand their options, and consider what is at stake.