Veterans Matter helps veterans find long-term housing and provides case management. | stock photo
Veterans Matter helps veterans find long-term housing and provides case management. | stock photo
Ken Leslie, the founder of a nonprofit group called Veterans Matter, which focuses on helping homeless veterans, appeared on WJR's "The Frank Beckmann Show."
“What people don’t realize is oftentimes they experience things that no one should have to experience,” Leslie said on the radio program. “And then they've got to cope with it somehow.”
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, drug abuse and alcohol abuse are all challenges some veterans face.
“The homeless veterans end up on the streets from all of those,” Leslie told Beckmann. “When you’re homeless, you are at the dead end of life. Where do you go after that?"
Veterans Matter tries to provide hope.
“Until you have some hope, you’re not going to go anywhere,” Leslie said on the radio show. “If you have no hope, that’s when people take their lives.”
Veterans Matter helps the veterans find long-term housing and provides case management “that helps them with whatever they need to be helped with,” Leslie explained to Beckmann.
He is amazed with the support citizens provide for the programs.
“America does respond,” he told Beckmann. “Regular Americans like you and me stand up and say, 'They fought for us and we’re sure as hell not going to stop fighting for them'.”
The Veterans Matter programs allows the homeless veterans “to get housed in literally minutes” the group’s website says.
“Essentially, your donation is used as a deposit paid directly to the landlord to allow the veteran or veteran's family to cross the threshold into a warm place called home for a fresh start,” the Veterans Matter website states.
Leslie is himself a former homeless alcoholic and addict, according to the Veterans Matter website.
“In 1990 he turned his life around, founding a successful executive search firm, which over the next two decades, allowed him to become a philanthropist and create and fund programs to help the homeless in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio,” according to the website.
He started fundraising to help homeless veterans cover their deposits for housing, which led him to launch Veterans Matter.
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