Each day at Connections for the Homeless, we work with people desperately in need of housing, and the biggest obstacle we face is that there simply isn’t enough housing to connect them to. The graph below helps explain how we got into this situation. Zoning reform is a crucial first step in removing obstacles to developing more abundant and affordable housing — in Evanston and across the country.
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Long-time Evanston residents, especially our Black and Brown neighbors, have been driven out over the years by skyrocketing rents. Allowing for the development of more housing will help stabilize rent increases over time while spreading the tax burden over a larger population.
“But wait,” some critics of zoning reform say. “Won’t this just be a gift to developers seeking to build luxury housing?” The answer to this is a resounding no. It’s true that zoning reform will make it more predictable, transparent, and thus less costly for developers seeking to build in Evanston, but this is the key to addressing the root cause of skyrocketing rents: too few homes for all the people who want to live here. You can think of housing as a high-stakes game of musical chairs. Unlike the grade-school game, it’s easy to predict the losers of the housing game: those with fewer resources. By adding more homes, zoning reform means there are fewer losers in the housing game.
But we can’t stop there. We also need to advocate for anti-displacement strategies to protect vulnerable households already here. That’s why it’s important that Evanston also strengthen its inclusionary housing ordinance — to increase the stock of Evanston’s affordable housing.
So we have a choice: we can keep the status quo and hope the problem of skyrocketing housing costs gets better on its own somehow, or we can pass Envision Evanston 2045 doesn’t move forward, which is based on the same kinds of zoning changes that helped places like Minneapolis stabilize rental costs over the course of a few years.
“But wait,” some critics of zoning reform say. “Won’t this just be a gift to developers seeking to build luxury housing?” The answer to this is a resounding no. It’s true that zoning reform will make it more predictable, transparent, and thus less costly for developers seeking to build in Evanston, but this is the key to addressing the root cause of skyrocketing rents: too few homes for all the people who want to live here. You can think of housing as a high-stakes game of musical chairs. Unlike the grade-school game, it’s easy to predict the losers of the housing game: those with fewer resources. By adding more homes, zoning reform means there are fewer losers in the housing game.
But we can’t stop there. We also need to advocate for anti-displacement strategies to protect vulnerable households already here. That’s why it’s important that Evanston also strengthen its inclusionary housing ordinance — to increase the stock of Evanston’s affordable housing.
So we have a choice: we can keep the status quo and hope the problem of skyrocketing housing costs gets better on its own somehow, or we can pass Envision Evanston 2045 doesn’t move forward, which is based on the same kinds of zoning changes that helped places like Minneapolis stabilize rental costs over the course of a few years.
