The only thing that kept LaRae Cantley going was her three children.

She grew up surrounded by poverty and addiction, but despite her difficulties, she never expected to be homeless.

Yet one day in the late 1990s, a sheriff's deputy knocked on the door of her South Los Angeles house and told her and her husband they had five minutes to vacate the property. Cantley was stunned. She knew nothing about her husband's finances and had no idea he skimped on rent.

With nowhere to go, she sent their three children to live with the children's great-grandparents. She and her husband divorced, and she found herself homeless.

"There was nothing to catch us," she said.