Development Career - No College Degree / Unique Situation

Hi all - appreciate your advice on a very sensitive and atypical situation a close, long-time friend of mine is in. They dropped out of community college three years ago due to a personal / family issue, and were hired by their uncle to work for his small real estate development firm. The uncle owns a handful of Class-C office buildings in the outer boroughs of NYC (think Queens, the Bronx, etc), and my friend has been helping out in the development / project management of another one for the last year or so. The entire business is the uncle, my friend and a part-time bookkeeper, so this is by no means a career-track institution or anything, and they are only getting paid $50,500 / year, and have to commute about ~2 hours per day. The uncle is very old school and "doesn't believe in the WFH / hybrid work environment", even though the entire business could be run from an ipad in Hawaii, with a handful of site visits every month. On top of all that, they are now caring for a two year old daughter (with some help from the grandparents) and paying for expensive pre-school as a single parent. Again, very sensitive and atypical situation we're talking about. Given the lack of any clear pathway for career progression aside from waiting for the uncle to retire, what would you advise the friend to do here? As far as I can tell, they have about three options:

• Quit, take on student loans, go back to college part-time and find a part-time job to pay the bills, before ultimately pursuing a more conventional career. Honestly, this seems like an easier route than continue working 40 hours per week and spending another 10 hours per week commuting

• Try and find a different full-time job that will hire them without a college degree and minimal real-world experience, hopefully with some ability to WFH at least several days per week 

• Continue working for the uncle, being miserable and getting paid poorly while raising a child

Additionally, I understand that this entire situation is the result of a series of choices that most here would never make (or be in the position to make), but I appreciate you withholding judgement on the situation and simply sharing some advice. What would you tell your younger brother or sister if they found themselves in this situation?