COLUMBIA, S.C. — It was a night that Lashawn Banks will never forget.
She hadn't wanted to go to Allen Benedict Court or any public housing. She was working, living in an apartment with her three kids when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She lost her job, got pregnant, then lost her apartment, but thankfully, she says, someone signed her up for assisted housing and she found herself and her children at Allen Benedict Court.
She says she doesn't remember who signed her up but she was thankful as she moved in. But then one night, five months after moving in, everything changed.
She and her children, along with 400 residents, were evacuated from the Allen Benedict Court Apartments after multiple gas leaks were found and after two men died of carbon monoxide poisoning January 17, 2019.
It was a scramble to grab everything they could from their apartment. No one knew if they were going to come back, if it would be OK.
It wasn't.
No one was going to be able to come back. The apartment complex closed. It was too old to try to renovate or retrofit.
The decision---that would be made much later--would be to tear the complex down. Everyone had to find another place to live.
Some residents found other public housing quickly, while some went to live with family, but others, like Banks and her children, ended up in hotels--lots of hotels.
"There is not a lot for the kids to do," said Banks, "they have pools but we would have to figure out where to get food, work, and we couldn't stay with them," So it wasn't easy.
It was hard to do homework. Everyone was in one room--clothes, food, everything they owned stacked up in the room.
Her kids spent time on electronics, reading in the evening, sometime they would go out to the parking lot, the one the could look out at from their hotel room.
They could play some, a few cartwheels or playing with toys, but living in a hotel, one room, with four people and one a baby, can be rough.
Banks was determined to find a place where she and her children would feel safe and at home.
She wanted to find a house. A real house with a front and backyard. A place her children that wasn't covered in asphalt, where they could play without dodging cars. After hotels and apartments she wanted a place that she could relax, that her kids could have their own rooms-not sharing hotel beds.
It took time. A lot of time.
And in that time, the Banks family went from hotel to hotel to hotel.
But now, the Banks family have a proper home complete with a front and back yard, a bedroom for all the kids, a big kitchen, and living room.
She was able to use her voucher for the home and cant say enough about how much she loves her landlord.
"I have a front yard, a backyard, I have a big kitchen, four bedrooms," she said as she looked at her children playing in the yard.
She feels like she is lucky, she says. She knows what it's like trying to find a place to call home, "I know and I'll pray," she said for others to find just what she has finally found.
.