A Safe Haven Foundation is a 501(c)3 not for profit, social enterprise that helps people ASPIRE. TRANSFORM. and SUSTAIN¬® their lives as they transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency with pride and purpose. A Safe Haven provides the tools for each individual to overcome the root causes of homelessness through a holistic and scalable model. A Safe Haven’s visible social and economic impact unites families, stabilizes neighborhoods, and creates vibrant, viable communities.
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A Safe Haven is both a tale of organizational success and the arc of a personal story from life in an immigrant family to a position of significant wealth. But with that journey came a call to give back to the world. This organization is a product of how both my husband Brian and I overcame significant challenges, including his own experience with chemical dependency, to turn compassion into action. We decided that once we had achieved some success in our personal lives, it was our goal to demonstrate to our children how to give back to the world. What evolved is a unique, vertically integrated, innovative treatment model backed by solid research and affirmed by client testimonials. To the credit of all involved, A Safe Haven is a proven concept representing a game-changing response to the broken systems now in place. By contrast, we propose to weave a new pattern of social business enterprise into the fabric of society.
Thus, a Safe Haven is a vision come to life, a place where people in crisis can find the food, shelter, treatment, medical care, education, job training and job placement they need under one roof. We call this place A Safe Haven. It is a model of continuous care that fulfills our mission to help people aspire, transform, and sustain their lives as they transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency with pride and purpose. If you walk down the halls and ask the people themselves how they best describe A Safe Haven, you will repeatedly hear the same three words. “It saves lives.”
Our approach has been lauded as the most comprehensive, state-licensed, community-based social service model in the country. Our proof of concept is in our numbers. Every year, we provide food, shelter, and services to more than 3,000 individuals through A Safe Haven, including men and women of all ages, youth, children, and veterans. We make approximately 1,000 job placements a year through our social business enterprises and enable many clients to find affordable housing through our resources. It all adds up to life renewed with purpose and hope. In turn these social and economic impacts restore lives, unite families, stabilize neighborhoods, and create vibrant, viable communities.
We know that our model works, and that it can save millions of lives from the dangers associated with homelessness, drug addiction and disease. We can do these things while putting money (including taxpayer dollars) to its best use while delivering a positive “return on investment” to improve society as a whole.
This is our historical opportunity to solve problems created over decades of missteps instead of leaving it to the next generation. It is not acceptable to push these problems aside or dump people into expensive and often fruitless “fixes” such as prisons, detox facilities, emergency room visits, or directionless handouts that create burdens on society rather than solutions in this world.
While there are multiple paths to recovery, A Safe Haven’s approach is one of the few solutions that addresses all an individual’s physical, economic, social, housing and spiritual needs, in a holistic way. We provide a critical, practical, frontline defense for people in the depths of despair from emotional, mental, and financial crisis. We have witnessed the human potential that emerges from this approach, enabling people formerly lost to drugs or living on the street to transform themselves and reclaim their lives, even to the point of fulfilling their own version of the American dream. The people we meet and assist in this process do not need handouts; they need empowerment. We do this by offering respect, encouragement, resources, and assistance to help people get their lives back on track. To learn more and be inspired, read HEALING Real Stories Told By People Who Overcame the Opioid and Homeless Epidemics by Neli Vazquez Rowland.
