Project Summary
Density is important for successful transit service, and recent state and local housing policies tie production to transit proximity. Multifamily housing, however, often faces many obstacles. One important obstacle is that most cities evaluate transit-adjacent multifamily housing developments with discretionary processes. Discretionary approval is slow and uncertain: developers and city officials negotiate project-by-project, sometimes adding years to project timelines. The resulting delays and conditions can depress housing production and raise costs, with the result being fewer transit-accessible homes. An alternative is by-right approvals, which automatically approve projects that meet published standards, bringing housing to market quicker and at a lower cost. By-right approval could deliver denser and more affordable housing to urban areas, supporting increased transit ridership and other mobility goals. Because by-right approval is relatively rare, however, estimates of how much more housing it could deliver remain vague. This project used the City of Los Angeles’ Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) program to help identify the role of by-right approval in delivering more housing near transit. The TOC program presents a rare opportunity to compare the impact of by-right and discretionary approvals in a single political and market context. The analysis compared costs, project timelines, and community benefits of by-right and nearby discretionary projects. The research team estimated reductions in project costs and time to market resulting from by-right approvals compared to affordable units provided by developers. This quantitative analysis was complemented by interviews with developers, community-based organizations, lenders, city officials, and others. The research team found that by-right projects were permitted 28% faster than discretionary projects, controlling for project and neighborhood characteristics. By-right projects also had less variance in their approval times, suggesting that by-right approval offers not just more speed but more certainty.
