Episode 8: Cultivating Hope with the Homeless, Featuring Neli Rowland of A Safe Haven

This week’s special guest on the Hope Matrix is Neli Vazquez Rowland. Neli is the Co-Founder and President of A Safe Haven (ASH), an award-winning vertically integrated social and economic development model that rebuilds the lives of individuals impacted by poverty, substance abuse, prison reentry, and homelessness. The ASH model uses a holistic, integrated, and individualized multi-disciplinary approach to offer addiction treatment, education, healthcare, job training/placement, and supportive and affordable housing development. ASH has served over 10,000 people since 1994, and is currently serving over 5,000 individuals each year.

In this week’s episode, Kathryn and Neli discuss the effect of the pandemic-related lockdowns and layoffs on American homelessness. They examine the helplessness and despair (the two ingredients of hopelessness) that many Americans experience when facing the homelessness issue, and review the hope tools, such as Stress Skills, that we can use to return to a hopeful, critical-thinking mindset.   Neli also presents inspired actions that we can take to help address the root cause of homelessness. 

To learn more about Neli’s work, visit https://www.asafehaven.org/ and http://nelivr.com/.