Homeless mother, children now have a roof over their heads thanks to WINK News viewers

A homeless mother and her children are off the streets and in a safe place Thursday. The family was living out of a car but then, the community stepped up after hearing their story.

“It’s good to know that there are people that still care for people who are not as fortunate,” said Tiffany Hodges.

They have given her hope. Sometimes, positive people get dealt a bad hand and that’s what happened to Hodges and her girls. But they never lost faith and, to her surprise, WINK News viewers found faith in her.

Hodges knows one thing: she believes in God no matter what.

“If I have nothing else, my faith is always there,” she said.

Perhaps until now, she didn’t know how much faith her daughters had in her.

“She has to go to work, and sometimes she’s a little late to pick us up, but we know it’s for a good cause and a good reason,” said one of her daughters, Jeniah Tyson. “She’s doing her best to take care of us in this situation.”

The situation was bad — One mom with two young girls, one of them with special needs. They had no home and now much until you saw her on WINK News.

Joe LaRue asked Hodges if he could stop by her job to give her some cash.

“The surprising thing is, you would think a person that had this problem would be totally stressed out. And the woman is a strong woman,” LaRue said.

“If I give up, what are they gonna do? Who are they gonna have? I have to be strong for them,” said Hodges.

Her strength came through to you. LaRue, among dozens of WINK News viewers who decided to help Hodges together paid to get the family out of the rental car they called home and into a hotel.

“Being able to take a warm bath,” Tyson said she’s thankful for. “Sometimes, the water we’d get, we’d have to put it in the trunk to get it hot. Here we can just get some hot water.”

“It gives me faith that my prayers, you know, God heard my cries,” Hodges said.

Her lesson to her girls: faith is often tested. Giving up on faith is never an option.

“I can tell in a couple weeks, or a month, we’ll be able to get a permanent home,” Tyson said.

Until they get that forever home, Lee County’s found a spot for Hodges and her girls in a shelter at the Salvation Army. They’ll have their own bathroom and bedroom where they can pray, play and, as we told you in our initial story, enjoy some karaoke again.