Metro Is Full Steam Ahead Growing Its Housing Portfolio

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority accelerated a plan to grow its housing portfolio through joint developments by 10,000 units.

Metro sped up its development process, releasing more requests for proposals in the last six months than it did in the prior decade. This change is meant to allow much-needed housing to be built near transit at a faster pace, but it also means increased competition for projects that get the green light.

“We’re putting all these properties out all at once,” Metro Deputy Executive Officer of Joint Development Wells Lawson said. “They're all going to be competing for financing roughly around the same time in Los Angeles through the normal channels, and we're concerned about that.” 

Just since the spring of 2024, Metro has brought four projects containing a total of 377 units online. 

Funding scarcity is always an issue for affordable and mixed-income projects, and these projects are unlikely to be an exception. Economic conditions are posing challenges for the market-rate components while limited affordable housing funds and the increased competition for them create hurdles for affordable projects, Lawson said. 

Community Corporation of Santa Monica is struggling to find funding for a 300-unit project at the 17th Street and Santa Monica College light rail station, according to CEO Tara Barauskas.

“Right now, the wells are all fairly dry, I would say, so it is definitely a big concern,” Barauskas said. 

Uncertainty surrounding the Section 8 program and its future funding is also concerning but isn’t stopping her in her tracks. 

“We just kind of keep plugging along and hoping that there will be funding sources there, and also researching and looking for new funding sources and new partners,” she said.

In 2023, Metro unveiled 20 sites it wanted to develop jointly to achieve its goal of adding 10,000 units, including at least 5,000 income-restricted affordable units, to its portfolio by 2031. The countywide transit authority has approximately 8,000 units in various stages of development, from planning to active construction. 

“I will even say we still think it's feasible, but I would say check in with me next year or two years from now,” Lawson said.

Because Metro had efforts to build housing already underway for roughly two decades when these new sites and new goals were launched, it counts units completed since 2023 toward its overall goal of 10,00 units, even if the process started years before the goal existed. 

This summer, about 380 affordable units came online in a development atop the Vermont-Santa Monica subway station in East Hollywood. The majority of the units were available to households making 50% or less of the area median income, while 94 were set aside for permanent supportive housing, which is traditionally offered to formerly homeless residents. 

A common critique of market-rate transit-oriented development is that it is geared toward more affluent people who are very likely to have and rely on cars. 

But the response the developer received from the community, which included about 8,000 applications for the fewer than 300 units of nonsupportive housing in the development, was a testament to the need for these types of housing as well as for transit-close housing, said Debbie Chen, director of real estate for Little Tokyo Service Center, which partnered with Metro on the project. 

The project was completed in seven years, which is less time than the 12-year average for projects before the 10,000-unit goal was adopted. For that reason and others, Lawson highlighted it as a success.

Since 2023, Metro has found ways to cut the average time for projects down to just five years, it says, an assertion that will take a few more years to test. Metro joint development projects through this initiative will be in planning phases until about 2028, Lawson said. 

“It just takes a long time to get these types of joint developments completed,” Chen said. “I think [developers] have to be prepared for that time horizon. You know, whether or not it has to always be this way, I don't know the answer.”