WATCH: A family adjusts to life in a shelter, as others wait for a place to call home

A Midlands family, that lost everything in the October flood, has found home again in an unlikely place, but they're lucky

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) – A Midlands family, that lost everything in the October flood, has found home again in an unlikely place, but they’re lucky. Columbia transitional housing shelter, St. Lawrence Place, has a waiting list with 65 approved families that need a place to call home.

“We are at capacity and every day we deal with the fact that there are more families out there that need help,” St. Lawrence Place President Lila Anna Sauls said.

The shelter has 30 units. The residents can live in them for up to two years. That means there can be a lengthy turnaround, and families who need housing now need to look elsewhere. Since the One Thousand Year Flood, the shelter has gotten an average of 25 calls for help each day.

“Basically we started getting calls Monday morning and the phones were ringing off the hook,” Sauls said.

Sauls said the flood changed the demographic of their residents.

“We went from dealing with families you would call stereo-typically homeless, coming from cars, stairwells, and all of a sudden we found ourselves dealing with flood victims, who were just as homeless as anybody else,” she said.

27-year-old Stephanie Ellerbe and her three children were flooded out of their apartment in Lower Richland on October 4.

“I just felt hopeless really, because we didn’t have a place to go,” Ellerbe said, “and questions that my children have, I couldn’t ask them, because I didn’t know.”

Ellerbe ended up knowing, much sooner than she anticipated.

“It was like a weight lift off my shoulders,” she said.

Ellerbe now call St Lawrence Place home. Ellerbe’s 10-year-old has Spastic Cerebral Palsy. With the move across town, she was forced to switch schools. Ellerbe’s nine-year-old and 11-year-old take a cab to their old schools in Hopkins.

“I’m trying to get everything back in order,” she said. “And St. Lawrence Place is giving me the chance to do that for my family.”

St. Lawrence has been working with area organizations to match homeless families with housing. It’s in the process of preparing for a major expansion.

If you want to help the shelter, with time or money, you can find the information for doing so here.

For a different way to get involved, consider taking part in the “Race for the Place 5K,” which happens February 20. Details about the race are here.