LOS ANGELES — For the last month, a single bedroom in a new temporary housing site in South Los Angeles has been a space of peace and happiness for Daylym Sorto and her four kids.

“I’m happy. I didn’t know what happiness was until I got out of being homeless,” Sorto said.

It’s been about one year since she and her kids fled a home where she experienced domestic violence, she said. But as they sought safety, her family lost a place to sleep at night.

“All the windows [were] broken. It didn’t feel like a home no more. I didn’t feel safe. I was getting harassed and stuff like that so I decided to just runaway from there,” she said. “I’ve been living out of motels, sleeping in the car.”

During that time, she said she was arrested for prostitution. It was a desperate measure she took to provide for her kids and her marijuana habit.

According to a 2018 Prison Policy Initiative report, formerly incarcerated people were 10 times more likely to be homeless compared to the general public. The report found credit checks, criminal history checks and large security deposits to be some of the leading causes.

To help women like Sorto post incarceration, Holliday’s Helping Hands recently opened South Harmony, a 29-bed temporary housing site in South Los Angeles for women and their children. The site provides meals, case management, housing and supportive services in partnership with Shields For Families. Holliday’s Helping Hands CEO Katina Holliday said these services are critical to help keep these high-risk families housed.

“Now, more than ever, the amount of families are increasing in homelessness along with women, in general. I mean, our cost of living has increased. Everything around is increasing in LA County alone, which is causing this rise in the homeless population.”

With a roof over her head, Sorto said she’s focused on staying sober and working on getting her GED.

“They’ve been helping me wash clothes. They cook the food so that gives me time to give them baths, play with them, read a book to them. Just little stuff like that, that I didn’t have time for when you are homeless,” she said.