The following essay by McGaw YMCA President and CEO Monique Parsons was published in the Evanston RoundTable on July 6, 2026.

A young man in his twenties moves to Evanston to start a career. He knows no one and has little savings, but he has a chance to build a life.

A father going through a divorce wants to stay close to his children but cannot afford a second home while helping support the first.

A transit worker struggles to keep up with rising costs despite working full time.

A man loses his job, then his health, then his savings, and eventually his home.

Different stories. Different circumstances. The same challenge: finding a stable place to live.

When we talk about housing, we often focus on rent prices, zoning decisions, or development proposals. Those conversations matter. But they can obscure a larger truth: the cost of housing is not measured solely in dollars. It is measured in opportunity, stability, health, educational outcomes, and ultimately in the strength of a community.

Over the past two decades in my various roles at the McGaw YMCA including oversight of our men’s residence affordable housing program, I have had the opportunity to work closely with people navigating housing challenges, and I have come to believe that housing is one of the most important issues facing Evanston’s future.

Housing insecurity does not begin when someone becomes homeless. It begins much earlier. This is especially true in recent years as more children have experienced the instability of growing inequity in society. We are now seeing more young adults just out of high school with more complex needs facing a deepening affordability crisis.

It begins when a family moves repeatedly because rents keep rising. It begins when parents must choose between paying rent and paying for childcare, medicine, transportation, or groceries. It begins when young adults starting out discover that even modest housing is beyond their reach.

Instability leaves a mark.

For the past decade, I have also served on the Evanston Township High School Board of Education. That experience has reinforced something educators see every day: housing is deeply connected to educational success.

Students cannot fully focus on learning when they are worried about where they will sleep. Frequent moves disrupt friendships, support systems, and academic continuity. The stress associated with housing insecurity follows children into classrooms, affecting attendance, concentration, mental health, and achievement.

Research consistently shows that housing instability is associated with lower academic performance, chronic absenteeism, and poorer long-term economic outcomes. Housing challenges do not remain confined to housing. They ripple outward into schools, workplaces, healthcare systems, and community life.

The effects are often cumulative.

Many young adults struggling to find stable footing today are carrying burdens that began years earlier. Economic hardship, housing instability, family disruption, and untreated trauma rarely occur in isolation. By the time these challenges become visible, they have often been developing for years.

At the same time, Evanston has become increasingly difficult to afford.

For many residents, especially younger adults, older adults on fixed incomes, and workers in service and public-facing jobs, the gap between wages and housing costs continues to widen. People who contribute every day to the life of our community increasingly find it difficult to remain part of it.

One of the most persistent misconceptions about affordable housing is that it serves people somehow disconnected from the broader community. In reality, the people struggling with housing costs are often the same people who make our community function. They drive buses, care for older adults, work retail jobs, deliver packages, prepare meals, maintain buildings, and support local businesses.

The challenge is rarely a lack of effort. More often, it is that housing costs have outpaced what many working people can reasonably afford.

What concerns me most is that we have steadily lost many of the housing options that once existed between homelessness and market-rate housing.

For decades, communities relied on a range of modest, affordable housing options that allowed people to regain stability after setbacks, save money, and build toward something more permanent. Many of those options have disappeared, not only in Evanston but across the country.

As these middle-ground housing opportunities vanish, more people find themselves with nowhere to turn when life takes an unexpected turn. A job loss, illness, divorce, or financial emergency can quickly become a housing crisis.

When those pathways disappear, the consequences appear elsewhere. They show up in schools struggling to support highly mobile students. They show up in healthcare systems treating preventable crises. They show up in workforce shortages when employees cannot afford to live near their jobs. They show up in growing concerns about social isolation and community fragmentation.

Housing policy is often debated in technical terms: density, affordability requirements, financing mechanisms, land use, and development. Those issues are important. But they are ultimately about people.

The larger question is what kind of community we want Evanston to be.

Do we want a city where young adults can establish themselves, where older adults can age in place, where working families can remain rooted, and where people can recover from setbacks without being forced to leave?

Or do we accept a future in which only those with substantial resources can afford to stay?

No single policy will solve the housing challenge. But meaningful progress begins by recognizing that housing is not merely a real-estate issue. It is an educational issue, an economic issue, a public-health issue, and a community issue.

A stable home provides more than shelter. It creates the conditions that allow people to work, learn, recover, contribute, and belong.

If we want a stronger, more inclusive Evanston, housing must be part of the conversation—not simply as a matter of affordability, but as a foundation for opportunity and community life itself.

Monique Parsons
President/CEO
McGaw YMCA