Looking to rent an apartment with terrible credit?

I have had an unfortunate few years and I'm still trying to come up from my past. My fiance of three years left my baby and I and we had to break a lease on a very expensive apt. Now I have that $7k apartment charge in my collections as well as all of our joint credit cards and his car that I helped co sign for. I have been a single mom waitress trying to figure things out for the past two years living in crummy places and my daughter is now going to start school next year. I want to rent in a place by a good school. But I don't think anyone will let me sign a lease because my credit is shot and especially that one apt lease breaking incident. Will I be stuck living in these broken down places and putting my daughter in a bad school? I don't want to waste the precious $40 on an application fee for them to laugh in my face. It has been about 2 1/2 years since the all of that happened.