I am really sorry to hear about your situation and that no one is willing to help you. It's too bad you live so far, if not I'd offer you a futon to crash on at least. while you figure something out. I will cross my fingers that one of those situations comes through. It nearly always seems that those without kids are the lowest priority for receiving assistance.

That one landlord sounds like he is really taking advantage of the situation. Some friends here that were looking for rentals went through a lot of that because there's a serious housing shortage - landlords would ask for huge deposits, co-signers that earn 5X the rent, payment of several months in advance, etc. Very abusive.