A Call for Housing Abundance

The mission of Connections for the Homeless is to serve and catalyze the community to end homelessness, one person at a time. The key to our success is housing, as is well documented in the 2022 book Homelessness Is a Housing Problem. As the book shows, we have no hope of solving the issue of homelessness if there isn’t enough housing.  ​

---

Unfortunately, we are currently living in the midst of an extreme housing shortage. There isn’t enough housing available for people at most levels of the income spectrum--not in Evanston, not in north suburban Cook or Chicago, not in our state, and not in the country—with the impact hitting people with the lowest incomes hardest. See the Illinois page of the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Housing Needs report for the numbers. 

Fortunately, the demand for more housing, particularly affordable housing, is growing—and it’s coming from multiple sectors with multiple viewpoints, all supporting the idea of “housing abundance.” I’m going to talk about two experiences I had around advocacy for housing abundance just in the last week. 
 
Housing First Can’t Work Without Enough Housing 
We just ran across a February 2024 blog post by Kevin Nye on his Who Is My Neighbor? website. The post is entitled “Housing First Didn’t Fail Us” and stresses that the Housing First model of homelessness intervention is extremely effective (countering arguments against it by non-progressives)--as long as housing is available to make it a reality. 
 
Some of you may remember Kevin Nye from last April when he spoke at an event hosted by the Lake Street Church and St. Luke’s Episcopal about his book, Grace Can Lead Us Home: The Christian Call to End Homelessness. While the book was clearly directed to Christian readers, Mr. Nye wrote accurately, knowledgeably, and compellingly about the issues of homelessness and, in particular, about “Housing First.”  

He carries his considerable writing skills to this blog post, making brilliant use of an unexpected and entertaining metaphor to get his point across. It’s worth a read, and we urge you to take a look! 

YIMBYTown 2024 and the YIMBY Movement 
Coincidentally, I was at a YIMBYTown conference last week in Austin, Texas, which really stressed the importance of housing abundance. The conference is a relatively new one, held by the sometimes controversial (in the past, at least) group, YIMBY Action. The advocates who participated were much younger than what we are seeing here in Evanston and north suburban Cook County, but they are very knowledgeable, enthusiastic, creative, and smart. It was really encouraging. You can see the variety of topics covered in the conference agenda.  

While the YIMBY movement has been accused of supporting development and  growth regardless of price points, among other things, the group at the conference was really focused on affordability, environmental issues, walkability, and livability. It was very encouraging to see such energy! ​