Posted on 11/13/2025 4:29:35 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
BOSTON (AP) — After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith was given the keys to a studio apartment in Los Angeles that came with an important perk — easy access to public transit.
The 38-year-old feels like she went from a life where “no one cares” to one where she has a safe place to begin rebuilding her life. And the metro station the apartment complex was literally built upon is a lifeline as she searches for work without a car.
“It is more a sense of relief, a sense of independence,” said Smith, who moved in July. She receives some government assistance and pays 30% of her income for rent — just $19 a month for an efficiency with a full-market value of $2,000.
“Having your own space, you feel like you can do anything.”
Metro areas from Los Angeles to Boston have taken the lead in tying new housing developments to their proximity to public transit, often teaming up with developers to streamline the permitting process and passing policies that promote developments that include a greater number of units.
City officials argue building housing near public transit helps energize neglected neighborhoods and provide affordable housing, while ensuring a steady stream of riders for transit systems and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of cars on the road.
“Transit-oriented development should be one of, if not the biggest solution that we’re looking at for housing development,” said Yonah Freemark, research director at the Urban Institute’s Land Use Lab.
“It takes advantage of all of this money we’ve spent on transportation infrastructure. If you build the projects and don’t build anything around the areas near them, then it’s kind of like money thrown down the drain,” Freemark said.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
they just can’t resist throwing “climate change” into everything they discuss.
It also makes it too dangerous to get to the public transportation.
Lolololol
Single working folks need to get off the train and not walk too far. Gotta be close to the sports bars and coffee shops. No place for the dregs other than the outskirts of town along with the hemp shops.
>>She receives some government assistance and pays 30% of her income for rent — just $19 a month for an efficiency with a full-market value of $2,000.
Unless she only makes $64 per month, somebody sucks at math.
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You’re welcome, Quantavia.
The government is generous with my money.
“After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith”...”
After years of grifting off the government and friends, and making no effort to work...
If City officials think it’s such a great thing, let’s see them move into these buildings.
No, Governor Hair Gel, the keys to affordability are to get the government's sticky hands out of everyone's pockets, and deporting the millions of dependent illegal alien criminal invaders whose presence the government has been facilitating for decades.
politicians need to let go of the idea of building “affordable housing”.
You can’t build affordable housing, because it would be NEW, paying todays prices for land, labor and materials.
You build MORE housing, a LOT more, and current homeowners will move into those homes freeing up and cheapest/oldest homes for those looking to buy a home for the first time. The only affordable houses are always going to be the oldest and most in need of repair.
We kinda tried that in the 2010s and it gave rise to Uber, Lyft and other ride share companies as young people did not want to be robbed or have their throats cut on public transportation. I use to drive Lyft back in 2016 and remember taking one customer to amounted 10 blocks from her apartment and as a long time resident of Washington DC, I told her she could have rode 2 stops up on the blue line and saved $10. She looked at me like I was crazy or something!
Let me guess, she's a blonde hair, blue eyed member of a professional beach volleyball team? Am I correct? 😀
This story made me laugh but I’m not quite sure why. Developers have been building apartments near public transportation for decades. Its the prime spot to develop apartments precisely because people who live in apartments in urban areas tend not to have cars and being close to public transportation is a prime benefit of those apartments. But it has nothing to do with climate change. Its like saying producing winter coats or sweaters to keep people warm fights climate change.
Yes, power hungry politicians prefer people living like ants on a hill - concentration of people produces concentration of political power.
“”””””We want to ensure that there are mixed-income, walkable, vibrant homes all around those transit investments””””””
We usually connect upward mobility and growing income with material goods, but its real benefit is the improvement of life through where we live and who we live among, living and raising our families among the sane, law-abiding, intelligent, and quality thinking people as our neighbors and peers is the real pay off of higher achieving.
Buying your wife the family’s first BMW or your daughter’s modest electric car when she graduates high school, or even being slow getting into the house after shopping and getting the security system back on, could be a death sentence when living in a government mandated “mixed-income” neighborhood.
Straight from the Scott Weiner handbook.
His singular desire is to destroy single family neighborhoods by allowing in high density housing - with a bonus if it’s near a “transit stop” - meaning a bus stop. I understand in California bus stops are being moved so developers can build high density housing in what were once single family neighborhoods.
Scott Weiner already got local zoning laws declared null and void and state zoning laws placed in effect - allowing up to four units on any given lot previously zoned for a single family home - I’m seeing three and four units going up on what was once a single family home property. Parking is already becoming a nightmare and traffic is horrible too.
Now with this urban housing “near transit” policy going into effect, we’re going to see mass apartment and condo building going up, with affordable housing mandates.
As they say: There goes the neighborhood!
All over the Northeast, at least, they’re trying to pass state legislation to override local zoning for just this purpose.
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