According to The Sacramento Bee, legislation passed in 2017 that was designed to produce "transit-oriented communities" (TOC) in California is starting to affect large-scale development around bus stops. The law also requires developers to build housing for lower-income residents. Since the TOC program was launched, 12,000 new housing units have been proposed. "It's busy," said Laurie Lustig-Bower, a commercial real estate broker with CBRE in the greater Los Angles area. "A significant amount of my business" has been these density-boosting projects.
Given the newness of the program, most of the resulting projects haven't broken ground and none have yet opened, according to the city of Los Angeles. And the number of new units pales in comparison with the 500,000 additional below-market homes Los Angeles County needs, according to the California Housing Partnership.
But affordable housing advocates praise the program for making a dent and reserving many of the coming below-market homes for the very poorest. And as projects rise, Los Angeles is making further progress toward its goal of putting housing in central locations near bus and rail lines.
"The two biggest problems we have is our housing crisis and our traffic woes," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in an interview. "TOC is an incredible weapon to help us address both."
Not everyone is a fan. Some homeowner groups criticize the streamlined process for increased-density projects. And some low-income advocates, though supportive in general, have raised concerns that to build new projects some developers are demolishing older rent-controlled buildings that can be a haven of lower-cost housing.
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