Ken Leslie started Tent City, an annual event for the unhoused, after reading a startling statistic in 1990: 60 percent of the homeless were families with children.

“I thought it was unconscionable that kids were on the street,” said Leslie, founder of homeless advocacy group 1Matters and its veterans counterpart, Veterans Matter. Leslie also used to be among the unhoused.

The all-volunteer event, which returned in 2006 after a six-year hiatus, gives the unhoused opportunities to partake in several different activities and services. Haircuts and doctor and dentist appointments are just some of the services offered in addition to food, clothing and birth certificates/legal documents being provided. The unhoused, along with volunteers and anyone who wishes to attend, will camp out at the Civic Center Mall, next to the Toledo Police Department on North Erie Street, from Oct. 26-28. Findlay is having a similar event the same weekend.

“Tent City is about bringing the community’s compassion together and delivering it in one weekend to people in need. It is incredible the amount of results that we get when we bring people together,” Leslie said. For $7,000, Tent City was able to offer $140,000 worth of services to the unhoused last year because of community collaboration.

Volunteers are what drive Tent City, Leslie said.

“The reason all this comes together is the insane, wonderful, hard-working, dedicated compassionate volunteers,” he said. There are slots for 462 volunteers this year.

Michele Ross

Michele Ross will be one of the volunteers at Tent City and was appointed honorary “mayor” of Tent City in 2008.

But before that, in 2007, she was a homeless crack addict who wanted to score loot at the event. Today, she credits Tent City with helping get her life on track.

“I went down looking for free stuff and I met some fabulous people,” she said. Now, Ross is a proud grandma and a cook at Bowling Green State University — and a renter of a “beautiful one-bedroom apartment.”

Ross said it was the casual questions the volunteers asked her in 2007 that inspired her to get clean.

“They wanted to know where I was from. When you answer that question you start thinking about your family,” Ross said. “Someone asked me if I had any children.

“Those are kind of questions people don’t ask each other when you’re living on the streets [because] you go there to die because you ruined everything. You ruined your relationship with your family; you ruined your relationship with jobs.”

One volunteer asked Ross what her hobby was. Ross told her that she liked to crochet. The volunteer brought her yarn and hooks the next time she saw her.

“I met people and those relationships developed into friendships,” Ross said. “The first thing that’s offered is the unconditional friendship by the people that volunteer there.”

A volunteer will walk each homeless person through Tent City to make sure he or she gets access to whatever’s needed, said Shawn Dowling, local coordinator for the Healthcare for Homeless Veterans program at the Ann Arbor VA Health System.

But before the “Project Connect” part of Tent City comes a walk from Promenade Park to the Civic Center Mall. Registration for the walk begins at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 26 and the opening ceremony is 6:15 p.m. A sock drive will also occur during the walk.

Walk participants who pay the $25 registration fee will receive a T-shirt and an entry into the door prize raffle.  The top 10 fundraisers also get one entry into the grand prize raffle. Raffle prizes include show tickets and the chance to meet musical artists like Justin Bieber, Carrie Underwood, The Who and ZZ Top.

ZZ Top recently became spokespeople for a Veterans Matter campaign and John Mellencamp has worked with Leslie in the past.

“We’re being recognized by people like John Mellencamp, ZZ Top and others in the music industry who say what [1Matters is] doing in Toledo is really cool,” Leslie said.

After the walk, dinner will be served at Tent City. Musical director Pat Lewandowski will ensure that tunes play into the night, Leslie said.

Neighborhood Health Association, which aims to put health services in reach of all community members, will provide some of the medical care on site, said CEO Doni Miller.

“There are so many people that are giving that care to the folks that day because they think it’s the right thing to do,” said Miller, who praised Leslie for organizing Tent City.

“Ken Leslie has embraced this whole idea of addressing those people who are unhoused, rom a tiny little seed, and he has made it grow into this mammoth tree,” she said.

There will also be social workers onsite who can help the unhoused get into programs they may need.

“We connect with people there and grab them while we have them,” Miller said.

Tent City provides a way for agencies to get in touch with the unhoused, often veterans, who may not be going to shelters that normally serve as access points for services, Dowling said.

“There are some people who aren’t able to access homeless shelters for a variety of reasons,” she said. These reasons could be PTSD or not being comfortable sleeping in a building.

This is why Tent City is a great way to connect homeless veterans with services, both Dowling and Miller said.

“What happens at Tent City is the veterans will come in and get some good food and connect with some positive people who aren’t going to judge them,” Dowling said.

Getting the unhoused legal documents like birth certificates is also crucial because these items are required for housing programs, she said.

The City of Toledo Department of Neighborhoods and Lucas County Health Department are covering the cost of 50 birth certificates, but more funds are needed.

Tent City also offers something to citizens who have a cozy bed at night — it gives them a chance to experience life as an unhoused person and sleep outside.

“I just know that if people are really curious about what it’s like to be homeless, coming down there is an experience they will never forget,” Ross said.

Leslie said he was recently reminded of his goal of helping the young and unhoused at Tent City.

After speaking at a high school, “This beautiful 16-year-old girl came up to me in tears and said, ‘Thank you for telling my story, I’m homeless.’ Her dad is a drug addict and drug dealer. She grew up never knowing if today was going be the day they got evicted or the utilities got turned off.”

The girl, who was kicked out by her father after he got a girlfriend, was inspired to speak at another high school.

“After she gave the talk to these kids, one of them came up afterward and said, ‘Thank you for telling your story. I’m homeless, too,” Leslie said. The second young woman is a longtime Tent City volunteer who Leslie did not know was homeless.

“People say all the homeless are drunks on the street. It’s bullshit. Look at those two girls who are in varsity sports in their schools, who are leaders in their schools and you tell me that the homeless want to be there, that they’re all bums, that they’re all lazy,” he said.

For more information, to volunteer or donate, visit http://www.1matters.org. To donate new or gently used winter clothing to Tent City’s clothing tent, drop off items at Cherry Street’s LifeBridge Center, 3342 Monroe St.

Tags: 1Matters, Doni Miller, John Mellencamp, Ken Leslie, Michele Ross, Pat Lewandowski, Tent City, Toledo Police Department, ZZ Top

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012 at 4:28 pm and is filed under 1Matters, Community, Featured.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tour manager for rock stars/photographer Harry Sandler will debut a show at 20 North Gallery on Oct. 5.

The exhibit “Nature’s Peace: One Man’s View of Nature” will benefit 1Matters, a local organization committed to helping the homeless. Ken Leslie, founder of 1Matters, met Sandler while filming a promotional video with John Mellencamp in Windsor, Ontario.

Sandler was impressed with Leslie’s organization.

“I like what they’re doing and I’ve always said that anyone could be homeless any minute,” he said. Sandler first exhibited in Toledo last year, also to help 1Matters.

“Harry is the kind of guy who just loves giving back for what he has received,” Leslie said.

Sandler recently returned from helping out Katy Perry on a jaunt that included Singapore, Hong Kong and Bali. He has also worked on tours for Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand and Van Halen.

But before music came photography. Sandler got his first camera from his father at 8 years old. He later worked as a freelance photographer for Rolling Stone and other publications in New York City.

Growing up in Atlantic City, N.J., and New York City, Sandler said he didn’t have many opportunities to photograph nature. His current exhibit features landscape photos taken during the past three or four years. Some of the photos are up to 4 feet wide.

“I don’t know when I became a landscape photographer but I watched Ken Burns, the documentary on national parks, and I think that was a real turning point for me,” Sandler said. “You can really show emotions with landscape photography once you understand it.”

Sandler will also teach a course of taking and editing pictures with iPhones while he’s in town. “iPhoneography 101” is set for 10 a.m. Oct. 6 at 20 North Gallery. The class costs $45 to attend. Tickets are available at www.1matters.org/donate/iphone.

“I got an iPhone in 2008 and I realized you could have fun with it. It kind of reminded me of the Polaroid my father gave me,” Sandler said, adding that he also takes pictures with his iPad.

Sandler’s landscape exhibit runs through Oct. 28. Tickets to the Oct. 5 premier are $50. There will be a wine bar and hors d’oeuvres.

All proceeds benefit 1Matters. 20 North Gallery is located at 18 N. St. Clair St., Toledo. Tickets are available at the website www.1matters.org/donate/harry.

Tags: 1Matters, 20 North Gallery, Harry Sandler, John Mellencamp, Katy Perry, Ken Leslie

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012 at 1:46 pm and is filed under 1Matters, Arts and Life, Exhibits, Star.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Volunteer organization 1Matters announced plans May 16 for “1Walks — 1Rocks — 1Matters,” a one-day spectacle on Oct. 9. The event includes a one-mile walk, a nine-hour concert (lineup TBA) and a photography exhibit from Harry Sandler that will run from Oct. 9-30.

“The thing that I think is so cool about 1Matters is it’s just people who give a rip,” founder and formerly unhoused man turned comedian Ken Leslie said. “We give people the opportunity to get involved. We are not trying to recruit or trying to save the world. What we are doing is changing lives one at a time.”

Sandler, a 45-year veteran of the entertainment industry, will donate 30-45 pieces of art from his life on tour in rock ‘n’ roll and through landscapes he came across on his travels. All proceeds from “Harry Sandler: Childhood and Other Neighborhoods” will be donated to the 1Matters foundation, which works to change the perception of the homeless, or unhoused, to reflect reality.

Bruce Springsteen (photo by Harry Sandler)

“It’s important from a personal standpoint,” Sandler said. “I always felt like an inch this way or an inch that way and I could have been on the street. I also feel that there’s not enough done in a global way to take care of people that lose everything and end up on the street — not always because of their own doing. There are a lot of factors that come into play on a lot of levels.”

Sandler began his career as a photographer in the 1960s, hired by Rolling Stone, Circus and record companies to capture musicians in New York including the Rolling Stones, The Who, Harry Chapin and others.

He left photography in 1976 and served in roles including tour manager as well as film and video producer during the next 35 years for artists such as the Eagles, Van Halen, Jewel, Billy Joel, John Mellencamp, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen and Barbara Streisand.

While on tour, Sandler continued to pursue photography on the side, a hobby he began when he was just 8 years old after he received a Polaroid camera for his birthday.

“I was immediately intoxicated with image making,” Sandler said.

“As time went on I spent many days learning the technical aspects of photography, but was always attracted to the alternative look at life through the lens of a camera.”

Sandler has also been at the forefront for the artistic movement in iPhone photography. After getting his first iPhone three years ago, Sandler began to transfer those pictures onto canvas. He is also planning on instructing a class on “iPhoneology” in the future, with all proceeds going to 1Matters.

“This process is groundbreaking,” Leslie said. “Putting pictures from the iPhone onto canvas, he’s probably the first to do it and he’s the only one with access to be able to produce these different images. Anyone who is a fan of rock ‘n’ roll can come down and find a beautiful new image of their favorites.”

Everglades (photo by Harry Sandler)

Leslie first met Sandler when he was in Canada to meet with John Mellencamp, who he worked with at the time. Mellencamp had interest in helping 1Matters with some public service announcements and that interest spread to Sandler.

“We got to talking and he had seen my photography and over the next few weeks went back and forth,” Sandler said. “We decided we should do something here for the organization that involved the combination of my fine-art photography and the musical acts I captured over the last 30-40 years.

“The last few years on the road with John Mellencamp, I would get up early every morning at sunrise and look around for images to capture. The world is a very simple, yet complex neighborhood to capture in an image. This is the challenge, and this is the victory.”

Leslie alluded that the interest from both Mellencamp and Sandler in 1Matters has already made its impact in the music community, which will soon bring others in to assist.

“They will be creating something that the entire music industry can rally behind,” Leslie said. “We will be making more announcements in the next 30 days of other artists that are getting engaged on the campaign.”

For more information about Sandler, visit www.HarrySandler.com. For information on 1Matters visit www.1Matters.org.

Tags: 1Matters, Barbara Streisand, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Eagles, Harry Sandler, Jewel, John Mellencamp, Ken Leslie, Stevie Nicks, Van Halen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Exhibits, Featured, Star.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Related story: Ken Leslie interviews John Mellencamp

Related story: 1Mile Matters Walk debuts

When David Smith was diagnosed with prostate cancer after showing signs of it during a free medical screening last fall at Tent City, he was stunned.

“In my wildest dreams, I did not imagine that,” Smith said. “The doctor said cancer and I wasn’t registering that yet. I was thinking positive up to that moment … I started crying at that moment. But luckily it was caught early.”

The 47-year-old was one of the hundreds of Toledoans who visited Tent City’s Project Homeless Connect last year to obtain free medical services, meals, showers, haircuts, clothing, flu shots, IDs and other services.

After his exam showed an enlarged prostate, Smith had a biopsy, which revealed stage-two cancer.

When Smith first visited Tent City five years ago, he was homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol. Thanks to the help and encouragement he received there and from other local organizations, Smith has been sober and living in his own apartment for two years.  Since his surgery earlier this year, he can add cancer-free and employed to the list.

“I just have to be thankful that Tent City was there,” Smith said. “I’ve had a lot of bad days, but … my health is getting better. I’m so grateful, I really am.”

Ken Leslie

Organizers said this year’s Tent City will be bigger and better than ever.

“The campus is expanding, services are expanding, I think it just keeps getting better every year,” said Pastor Steve North, founder of LifeLine Ministries.

Tent City founder Ken Leslie said volunteer response has been huge as usual and nearly all slots have been filled.

The weekend-long event will kick off with a cookout at 5 p.m. Oct. 29, at the Civic Center Mall in Downtown Toledo. Project Homeless Connect will be followed by a barbecue dinner and entertainment. On Oct. 31, a pancake breakfast followed by a worship service will wrap up the weekend.

Tent City, an all-volunteer event founded in 1990 and restarted in 2006 after a six-year hiatus, is sponsored by Cherry Street Mission Ministries, Mildred Bayer Clinic for the Homeless, Mercy Health Partners and Toledo Area Ministries. In 2007, singer John Mellencamp visited Tent City while in Toledo; the event was the impetus for Leslie to found 1Matters, the group that organizes Tent City.

Leslie, a longtime advocate for the unhoused, said there are a lot of misconceptions about homelessness.

“When you say homeless, you think of those people you see in the street,” Leslie said. “Those are the chronically homeless. They only represent 15 percent of the homeless in America, but they represent 100 percent in our mind.”

Tent City

Only when you include people like those who are doubled- or tripled-up in one home because they can’t afford housing on their own do you start to realize the full scope of the problem, Leslie said.

Success stories like Smith’s are what keep Tent City’s organizers going in the face of discouraging statistics, like a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report that found that the number of families with children homeless due to foreclosure and job loss rose 30 percent between 2007 and 2009.

North and Leslie, both of whom were once homeless themselves, said Tent City is about building relationships and challenging perceptions.

“Tent City is important to me because this is the group of people I came here for, this is the issue that makes my heart beat fast and keeps my adrenaline pumping through long days and short nights,” North said. “In the end, everything we do is revolved around relationships, especially those who are isolated, neglected, kicked to the curb, stereotyped.

“This is a way of injecting dignity back into people from whom it’s been stripped, a way of recognizing the value of every person and engaging people in not just a shove a tray across a counter or a professional way, this is about really engaging and spending time and getting to know other people and letting them get to know you and having a genuine relationship where trust can be built and where help can be given and accepted.”

For information, visit the website  www.1matters.org.

Tags: 1Matters, John Mellencamp, Ken Leslie, Tent City

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 5:24 pm and is filed under 1Matters, Community, Featured, Tent City.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The first 1Mile Matters walk in support of local unhoused kicks off during Tent City 2010.

“This year we’re attempting to bring a little more visibility to the plight of homelessness,” said Karen Soubeyrand, chairwoman of the walk. “This is a problem that can be solved, or at least we can gain some footing, if we work together as a community.”

The walk was added to Tent City activities as a way for more individuals to get involved and help out with the unhoused, said Ken Leslie, founder of 1Matters.

“One of our biggest problems [at Tent City] was having too many volunteers, so we were trying to think of a way we could engage more people,” he said.

The 1Mile Matters walk benefits 1Matters and its partners, including Toledo Streets, LifeLine Ministries medical mobile, Food for Thought and Cherry Street Mission Ministries.

“[The walk] will be a way people can come together as a community, to tell not only the members in our community, but the world that everyone does matter,” Leslie said.

Singer John Mellencamp provided the inspiration for 1Matters after he appeared at Tent City in November 2007 and took individuals to his concert, Leslie said.

“After the concert, one of the guys came back and said, ‘John talked to us from the stage. I guess I really do matter, don’t I?’ How could anyone not know in God’s great world that they matter? So that’s how 1Matters was founded,” Leslie said.

1Matters works to provide employment, shelter or services to the unhoused locally and is building a national campaign to help the unhoused.

“I view us and our role like football players. A player may get knocked down and I’ll offer a hand to help him get back up, but I’m not going to play his game for him. That’s the difference between a handout and a hand up,” Leslie said.

Mellencamp has continued to show support to the unhoused by recording public service announcements for Tent City, 1Mile Matters and World Homeless Day. The singer also granted an exclusive interview to be used in street papers across the United States.

“I think John believes the issue of domestic autonomy is critical for people to be the masters of their own fate. He is supportive of efforts where they can have a fresh start,” said Bob Merlis, the singer’s publicist.

Mellencamp has provided four tickets to his Nov. 19 show at the Fox Theatre in Detroit and the chance to meet him for the leading fundraiser of the walk. Additional prizes are available for other top fundraisers.

Registration begins at 10 a.m. with the walk at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 30. The roughly 1-mile walk goes from Promenade Park to Tent City in a zigzag path because “life isn’t straight.” The walk concludes with lunch.

Individuals can register online or the day of the walk. Those who raise at least $25 will receive a T-shirt.

To show support the walk, Leslie has recruited nearly every local media outlet, including Toledo Free Press, to be a sponsor.

To register for the race and learn more, visit www.1matters.org.

Tags: 1Matters, John Mellencamp, Ken Leslie, Tent City

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 3:52 pm and is filed under 1Matters, Community, Tent City.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Ken Leslie: We first met two years ago when you made an unpromoted stop at the annual Tent City Project Homeless Connect in Toledo. You just wanted them to know they matter. Bob Merlis [Mellencamp’s publicist] told me you were touched by the experience. How so?

John Mellencamp: When you see what progress can produce, and also what progress can discard, it makes a feller wonder … calling it progress does not make it right.

In this country right now there is no middle class, no place for middle class. You are either really rich or you are really down and out. It’s hard times in this country right now.

KL: When you were on stage at Tent City, you spontaneously decided to invite everybody there to your concert, all of the unhoused people.

JM: Right.

John Mellencamp (AP)

KL: About 70 people went and I understand you talked to them from the stage about hope. As you know, one of the guests came back from the show and said “Ken, John talked to us from the stage — I guess I really do matter.” That was the founding moment of 1Matters and actually that’s why we’re here. Your whole career, you’ve had the compassion for and worked for those with little or no voice. What is the root of that compassion; where does it come from? Was there something in your childhood that started this feeling of compassion?

JM: Well for me, it started with race. I was in a band when I was 13, 14 years old and it was the mid-’60s and it was a racially mixed band. I was the lead singer and this black kid was a singer. He was a couple years older than me, really good. We’d play every weekend at fraternities and in hotels and stuff like that. It was a soul band. And I saw the way people treated him. It was like, ‘wow, really?’ Wait a minute, you loved him on stage but now he’s gotta go wait outside? And so I think that made quite an impression on me as a young guy.

KL: How’d you respond?

JM: Well, there were times that there were fistfights. I remember in a little town in Indiana there was a fistfight in between one of our breaks because of his race. So, you know.

KL: Since then, you’ve carried on standing up for farmers, for the people.

JM: Well, I’m Sisyphus myself; I’m always the guy who’s rolling the rock up the hill, and every time I get too close to the top, I either let it roll back down on purpose or it just rolls back, catches on fire and rolls down at someone. So I know what it’s like to have to work at something. My struggle is obviously different than some folks’ struggle, but, nevertheless, we all have our problems.

KL: How would you define your struggle?

JM: I’ll answer it like this:  A man writes to what he strives to be, not what he is.

KL: When I was unhoused and living in my car, you nailed the feeling of hopelessness in “Graceful Fall”: “It’s not a graceful fall from dreams to truth, there’s not a lot of hope if you got nothing to lose.”

Since 2007, foreclosures and job losses increased the number of families in shelters nearly 30 percent. Each night there are 640,000 unhoused Americans who have lost domestic autonomy and are living on the streets and in shelters, 15 percent are veterans.

As you did from the stage in Toledo, what are your words of hope to all of our brothers and sisters who are living on the streets of our country?

JM: Wow, that’s a big question, that’s an awfully big question … See, the problem is, most people give up too early and I’m not talking about just the people on the street. I’m just talking about people in general. They give up on relationships too early, they give up on themselves too early, they give up on life too early. I mean I’ve been writing that since I was a kid.

In the song called “Jack and Diane,” you know they were only 16 and already giving up. People just give up too early, they just quit, you know, “this is too hard,” or, “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” I think that’s a problem, and I think that’s a problem our country has.

Over the decades it was allowed to happen by the work ethic and through capitalism, a lot of things that affect this country that allow people to think that way, that the world owes them a living. And as soon as you start thinking that somebody owes you something, forget it man, you’re done.

And as soon as you start thinking you’re right and everybody else is wrong … It’s like the guy who was married six or seven times, hell, I think it might be me … I think this could be me, I’m starting to think this is my problem.

Edited from the original version published in Toledo Streets. Reprinted with permission of Ken Leslie.

Tags: 1Matters, John Mellencamp, Ken Leslie, Tent City, Toledo Streets

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 3:50 pm and is filed under 1Matters, Community, Tent City, Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.