Yes, in the time it takes light — or, in this case, gravitational waves (GWs) from the black hole merger event GW190521 — to travel from a source to an observer, the Universe expands, thus increasing the distance further.
Various distance terms
In the following, "$\mathrm{Glyr}$" means a distance of a billion lightyears, while "$\mathrm{Gyr}$" means a time of a billion years.
There is a slight confusion, I think, in the quoted distance of $17\,\mathrm{Glyr}$ (Abbott et al. 2020): This is the so-called luminosity distance, which is the distance that satisfies the usual inverse-square law. This is not the same distance that you would measure if you were to freeze time and lay out meter sticks. This physical distance is smaller, only $9.5\,\mathrm{Glyr}$.
These values correspond to a redshift of $z=0.82$. That is, if GW190521 was luminous, its light would be redshifted by a factor $(1+z)=1.82$. In fact, in this case an electromagnetic counterpart was reported, albeit not with a measured redshift (Graham et al. 2020)
The time it took the GWs to travel to us is called the lookback time; it is the quoted $7\,\mathrm{Gyr}$. When GW190521 emitted the GWs we detect today, it was closer to us by a factor $(1+z)$. That is, its physical distance was only $5\,\mathrm{Glyr}$.
For a flat universe (which our Universe is to high precision) this is equal to the so-called angular diameter distance, called so because it is the distance that satisfies the usual relation between distance $d$, size $D$, and angle $\theta$, namely $\theta = D/d$.
Relation between lookback time and distance
In every-day life, all these distance measures are the same, and in the Universe, for small distances they also coincide. But because of the expansion of the Universe, and because the Universe's components (matter, radiation, and dark energy) influence its geometry, as the distance of an object increases they become increasingly different.
You can find the equations here, or use a cosmological calculator such as Ned Wright's (as commented by Alchemista). Alternatively, you can calculate them in Python using the module astropy like this:
>>> from astropy.cosmology import Planck15
>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> from astropy.cosmology import z_at_value
>>> dL = 5.3 * u.Gpc # Lum. dist. in giga-parsec quoted in Abbott+ 20
>>> z = z_at_value(Planck15.luminosity_distance,dL) # Corresponding redshift
>>> print(z)
0.8174368585313242
>>> print(Planck15.lookback_time(z))
<Quantity 7.11401487 Gyr>
>>> print(dL.to(u.Glyr)) # Convert parsec to lightyears
<Quantity 17.28628801 Glyr>
>>> print(Planck15.comoving_distance(z).to(u.Glyr)) # Comoving dist. is equal to phys. dist. today
<Quantity 9.53452323 Glyr>
I used this to plot the current distance to GW190521 and other objects as a function of lookback time:
The answer to your title question
To answer the question in your title requires us to define exactly what we mean:
- Light from an object which has a physical distance of $1\,\mathrm{Glyr}$ now, is redshifted by $z = 0.070$, its light has been traveling for $0.97\,\mathrm{Gyr}$, and it was $0.93\,\mathrm{Glyr}$ away from us when it emitted the light we see today.
- Light from an object that was $1\,\mathrm{Glyr}$ away when it was emitted, traveled $1.03\,\mathrm{Gyr}$ before reaching us with a redshift of $z = 0.076$, and the object is now $1.076\,\mathrm{Glyr}$ away.
As you can see, the difference is not very large, but as you go to higher redshifts, it increases. The hitherto most distant observed galaxy, GN-z11, has a redshift of $z=11.09$. It was only $2.7\,\mathrm{Glyr}$ from us when it emitted the light we see today, but in the $13.4\,\mathrm{Gyr}$ it took the light to reach us (most of the age of the Universe), GN-z11 moved out to a current distance of $32.2\,\mathrm{Glyr}$!
