Meet Our Founder

Samuel Doolittle

Founder and Manager, Healing Haven Home LLC / Certified Peer Support Professional

Healing Haven Home was not built from a business idea. It was built from compassion, lived experience, and a conviction that no one should have to choose survival over freedom.

Where he comes from

Samuel grew up in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a small city on the shoreline where the factories left and the jobs went with them. It is a place where poverty is not a statistic but a daily condition. Boarded houses on blocks that used to be full. Schools fighting to stay open. Young men who could see exactly two ways out and knew that only one of them was likely.

He was part of it. He made the choices the street asked of him, and he lived with what those choices cost. But somewhere in the middle of it he understood something that changed the direction of his life: where he came from was real, and it was not the same thing as where he was going. The circumstances were true. The outcome was not fixed.

Grief has walked with him the whole way. He lost his mother in 2019 and his brother in 2020. In 2026, he lost his aunt and his grandmother a month apart. He carries all of them into this work.

That is the belief he brought with him. If it was not fixed for him, it is not fixed for anyone.

Samuel knows what it means to make mistakes, face consequences, and fight for a second chance. After living a lifestyle that ultimately led to incarceration, he has spent the last two years rebuilding his own life with humility, accountability, and purpose. Every step of that journey has strengthened one belief: people can change when they are given the opportunity, the support, and someone who genuinely believes in them.

The conversation that planted the seed

Long before Healing Haven Home became a reality, God began shaping Samuel's heart through moments he would never forget.

Years ago, while incarcerated, Samuel met a man who had been living in homeless shelters and, at times, sleeping in the woods. The man often came to Samuel, and over time they built a friendship.

Then one day, the man approached him filled with excitement. “Bro, I finally got sentenced.”

Samuel smiled, thinking his friend was relieved because he would soon have the opportunity to start over. He imagined him getting healthy, rebuilding his life, finding work, and moving forward. Then Samuel asked, “How much time did they give you?”

Forty six years. He was only thirty nine years old.

Seeing Samuel's confusion, he explained why he was so happy. He said he would finally have three meals a day. He would not have to sleep in the woods anymore or spend cold nights wondering where he would rest. He would not have to stay in overcrowded shelters where he never felt safe. He would have a bed, friendships, and the security of knowing what tomorrow would look like.

That conversation broke Samuel's heart. It forced him to confront a painful reality: someone believed prison offered a better life than freedom because it provided the basic things every human being deserves. Food. Safety. Shelter. Belonging.

Samuel carried that moment with him for years. It planted a question he could never shake. What if people had a safe place to rebuild before they reached that point?

The moment it became a calling

The vision stayed in his heart for nearly six years. Then, on January 16, 2026, that vision became a calling.

While at work, another man approached Samuel with tears in his eyes. “Bro, I am homeless. I do not have anywhere to go. I do not have any family here. I do not have anything.”

Those words immediately took Samuel back to the conversation he had years before. Once again, he was standing in front of someone who was not asking for luxury. He was simply asking for somewhere safe to exist.

Samuel understood that feeling in a deeply personal way. He knows what it feels like to carry the weight of a past that can make people overlook your future. He knows how difficult it is to rebuild when doors continue to close because of where you have been.

In that moment, Samuel realized he did not just want to encourage people anymore. He wanted to build something that could change lives.

Although he had never remodeled houses before, he picked up the tools anyway. He learned as he worked. Every wall repaired, every floor installed, and every room prepared became part of something much bigger than construction. He was not simply renovating a house. He was creating a home where people could begin again.

What the work is built on

Healing Haven Home exists because Samuel believes everyone deserves more than a second chance. They deserve a real opportunity. An opportunity to heal. To be accountable. To rebuild relationships. To discover purpose. And most importantly, to be loved.

Love is the foundation of everything Samuel does. Not a love that ignores responsibility, but a love that sees the value in people even when they struggle to see it themselves. A love that believes someone is more than their addiction, more than their incarceration, more than homelessness, more than trauma, and more than the worst decision they have ever made.

Samuel is not trying to rescue people. He is committed to walking beside them. His goal is not simply to provide a roof over someone's head for a few months. His heart is to help people build lives that are healthy, stable, and lasting. He wants to see families restored, cycles broken, confidence rebuilt, and futures changed, not just for one person, but for generations to come.

Today, Healing Haven Home is the result of one man refusing to let painful moments go to waste. The conversation in prison planted the seed. The encounter years later became the catalyst. The love God placed in Samuel's heart became the foundation.

Your past does not have the final word.

Healing Haven Home exists for people who are rebuilding their lives, whether they are coming from incarceration, addiction recovery, homelessness, military service, personal hardship, or any season that has left them searching for stability, hope, and a fresh start. Because everyone deserves more than a place to stay. Everyone deserves the opportunity to heal, a place to belong, to be seen beyond their circumstances, and the chance to build a future they can be proud of.

At Healing Haven Home, we believe that when people are met with love, dignity, accountability, and unwavering support, lives can be restored and legacies can be rewritten.