FOX 2 Detroit, Charlie Langton and Jack Nissen, February 12, 2025

While the mayor is looking to overhaul the city’s homeless services department, the 29-year-old mother is reeling from what she says was the one mistake she made and the painful consequences that followed.

What they’re saying:

Tateona Williams says she did everything in her power to keep her kids safe and anyone familiar with her knows the kind of mother she is.

“Everybody who knows me knows that I worship the ground that those kids walked on,” he said, tears rolling down her face.

Her children ate right. They went to school. According to her mom, they “didn’t want for nothing.”

“I had one mistake,” she then said.

A day earlier, her cousin Javeina Moore told FOX 2 that her only mistake was having too much pride to ask for help. And yet, Williams had reached out for assistance.

If it wasn’t the city that she had phoned, it was her children’s father.

“He had an excuse every time. Either he’s working, they can’t come where he’s living, he lives with a female, and the parents don’t want kids there, or something,” Williams said. “Maybe I asked the wrong people for help, but that was the only thing I did wrong.”

When she called the Detroit’s homeless solutions agency, another unhelpful reply was waiting for her.

“And every time I call they said they don’t a bed, they don’t have family beds,” she said.

The last time she phoned the city was in November. But long before that, she had joined Detroit’s Coordinated Assistance Model (CAM) that helps connect struggling citizens with support services like housing and treatment.

Nothing came of her efforts, leading to a freezing night for herself, her mother, and her five kids sleeping in a 2002 Chrysler Town & country minivan. They had been living out of the van since November.

Read More: FOX 2 Detroit