LA Metro takes important step to create affordable housing and address displacement around transit
By: Anisha Hingorani
Too often, new or proposed transportation projects spark housing affordability concerns for low-income communities of color living around transit. Stable, affordable and safe housing is foundational to families’ abilities to access to health, economic and educational resources. And with the County’s $120 billion investment in our region’s transportation system over the next 40 years, these community concerns speak to larger and related fears of racial displacement, homelessness, and criminalization.
But thanks to the leadership of the Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles (ACT-LA), last month the Metro Board of Directors adopted a new policy that will help mitigate the forces of displacement in Los Angeles County, capping a months-long stakeholder input process and creating a ground-breaking standard for how transportation agencies across the country can protect vulnerable renters and stabilize rents around transit.
The Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) policy establishes Metro’s commitment to protect public transportation access for low-income residents through a slate of policy goals, which includes increased affordable housing around bus stops and rail stations, protections against residential and commercial displacement, improved conditions for walking and biking, and incentives for community-engaged planning and economic development. It’s the first of its kind policy for a large transportation agency but not a first for the region. In 2016, ACT-LA helped develop and pass Measure JJJ, which created a Transit-Oriented Communities program in the City of Los Angeles.
The policy will ease transportation-induced displacement, which pushes low-income, transit-dependent renters further away from the system in favor of more affluent, car-owning residents. It will also help to bolster ridership levels among Metro’s core riders, over 80% of whom are low-income people of color, and create denser, more walkable neighborhoods. The policy builds on Metro’s Joint Development and MATCH loan programs, which designate affordability levels on Metro-owned land and provide low-cost financing to affordable housing developers seeking to preserve and expand affordable housing within a half-mile of transit. Together, they form the start of a comprehensive framework for how transportation agencies can incentivize equitable development around transit and address the region’s dual crises of housing affordability and homelessness.
Metro has had a poor track record as a transportation planner and developer, but its leaders have taken steps to repair relations with historically disinvested communities through Metro’s recently adopted Equity Platform, which applies active listening and engagement across all of Metro’s decision-making processes. The Transit-Oriented Communities policy was a promising pilot effort for those principles: it was developed with robust engagement with community-based organizations working on affordable housing, mobility, tenant rights, racial justice and economic justice issues, and creates a model for more inclusive public participation.
The passage of the policy marks a victory for ACT-LA and its network of Black and Brown community leaders and residents who are fighting to stay in place and fully realize the benefits of transit investments that are slated for their neighborhoods. While there is much to celebrate there is, as always, more work to be done to translate the policy win into robust and equitable implementation. Importantly, Metro and TOC advocates will need to build support for this policy countywide and encourage local jurisdictions to enact TOC policy strategies that will increase access to and housing affordability around transit. For this next phase, Advancement Project California is working closely with ACT-LA members to develop a set of equity-based performance measures to track Metro’s progress in addressing displacement and protecting transit-dependent renters.
Along with our performance measures research, Advancement Project California will continue to work alongside ACT-LA and engage agency staff and leaders to keep community concerns central to the implementation plan and ensure that local jurisdictions have the support and resources needed to build equitable and affordable places for low-income communities of color to thrive.
To learn more about ACT-LA, go here.