Veterans looking for housing assistance and information are encouraged to attend a free workshop led on the third Thursday of every month by Yvette Jones-Swanson, a consultant with expertise on the issues surrounding homelessness and veterans.
The next workshop will take place from 10 a.m. until noon at the Forest Park Vet Center, 1515S. Harlem Ave.
Veterans are a population extremely susceptible to homelessness, with 32,882 Veterans experiencing homelessness in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Jones-Swanson experienced firsthand what it was like to be a homeless veteran and have no resources to turn to. This led her to launch her housing workshops in 2013.
“My ex-husband was very abusive,” Jones-Swanson said. “I kept leaving the home in which I was being abused in, which caused my own homelessness. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t find the resources to help me out of that situation.”
Her workshops cover a wide breadth of topics, from government resources to VA loan resources to legal information about owning a home. Jones-Swanson emphasized that there are resources available to support those experiencing homelessness.
“We have had and still have a revolving door of homeless veterans who have never used their resources or benefits simply because they don’t know they have them,” Jones-Swanson said. “I started the workshops to teach them how to access resources to use their benefits in housing and home ownership.”
Since she became a real estate agent in 1996, Jones-Swanson has helped find housing for more than 5,000 veterans in the city of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, she said.
One such veteran is Thomas Wilson. Before being connected with Jones-Swanson, Wilson was living in a storage unit. Now, he has been living in his condo for about 13 years.
“I followed everything that (Jones-Swanson) told me to do step-by-step and that brought me out of homelessness into where I’m at now,” Wilson said. “I’ve been a success story. I’m not going anywhere.”
“The overall impact I hope to have with this program is for the knowledge to be shared on a vast scale,” Jones-Swanson said. “Without proper knowledge, our people suffer.”
Every time she helps house a veteran, Jones-Swanson said she gets to share the same feeling of what it felt like when she went from being homeless to renting her first apartment.
“I get to watch grown men cry because now they have a home with a deed. I get to watch women who are veterans, literally fall on the floor and praise and worship because now they have a home for their three children. I get to watch so many emotions and so much joy from veterans who were once discarded, and now they have dignity again,” Jones-Swanson said.