BOSTON — After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith was given the keys to a Los Angeles studio apartment 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. 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 into the unit in July. She receives some government assistance and pays 30 percent of her income for rent — just $19 a month for an efficiency apartment with a full-market value of $2,000.

“Having your own space, you feel like you can do anything,” she said.

Metro areas from Los Angeles to Boston have taken the lead in tying new housing developments 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.

Building housing near public transit helps energize neglected neighborhoods and provide affordability, city officials say, 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,” said Urban Institute Land Use Lab research director Yonah Freemark, who has written extensively on the topic. “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.”

The Santa Monica and Vermont Apartments, where Smith lives, is part of an ambitious plan by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build 10,000 housing units near transit sites by 2031 — offering developers land discounts in exchange for affordable housing development and other community benefits.

In Washington, D.C., the transit authority since 2022 has completed eight projects that provided nearly 1,500 apartments and a million square feet of office space. About half were in partnership with Amazon, which committed $3.6 billion in low-cost loans and grants for affordable housing projects in Washington, as well as Nashville, Tennessee, and the Puget Sound area in Washington state. Almost all are within a half-mile of public transit.

“Big cities face the greatest challenges when it comes to traffic congestion and high housing costs,” Freemark said. “Building new homes near transit helps address both problems by encouraging people to take transit while increasing housing supply.”

In Boston, the Pok Oi Residents in Chinatown is a 10-minute walk to the subway and a half-dozen bus stops. That’s a draw for Bernie Hernandez, who moved his family there from a Connecticut suburb after his daughter was accepted into a Boston university.

“The big difference is commuting; you don’t need a car,” said Hernandez, who said he can walk to the grocery story and pharmacy. His 17-year-old daughter takes the subway to school. Now, his car mostly sits idle, saving him money on gas and time spent in traffic.

“You get to go to different places very quickly,” Hernandez said. “Everything is convenient.”

States across the country are passing laws targeting restrictive zoning regulations that for decades prohibited multifamily construction and contributed to housing shortages.

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a state law allowing taller apartment buildings on land owned by transit agencies and near bus, train and subway lines.

“Building more homes in our most sustainable locations is the key to tackling the affordability crisis and locking in California’s success for many years to come,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, who authored the bill.

California joins Colorado, which requires cities to allow an average of 40 housing units per acre within a quarter-mile of transit, and Utah, which mandates about 50 units per acre. In Washington, the governor this year signed a bill allowing taller housing developments in mixed-use commercial zones near transit.

“We want to ensure that there are mixed-income, walkable, vibrant homes all around those transit investments and that people have the option of using cars less to improve the environmental health of our communities,” said Rep. Julia Reed, who authored the Washington bill. “It’s about giving people the opportunity to drive less and live more.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has made housing a priority. Among her most potent tools is a 2021 law that requires 177 towns or communities nearby to create zoning districts allowing multifamily development. The state provided nearly $8 million to more than 150 communities to help create these zones and threatened to cut funding for those that don’t. More than 6,000 housing units are in development as a result.

“You put housing nearby public transit (and) it’s great for people,” Healey said. “They can literally get up, leave their home, walk to a commuter rail and get to work.”

Among the first to comply was Lexington, which has approved 10 projects, including a $115 million complex with 187 housing units and retail space.

Walking past earth-moving equipment and dump trucks at the construction site earlier this year, project manager Quinlan Locke said: “This is a landscape yard. It’s commercial. It’s meant for trucking. Two years from now, it’s going to be meant for people who live here, work here and play here. This is going to become someone’s home.”

Some advocates argue the lofty goals of transit-oriented housing are falling short due to fierce local resistance and lack of funding and support at the federal and state levels.

Higher mortgage interest rates, more government red tape, rising construction costs and lack of investment at transit stations also have contributed to a troubling trend — nine times more housing units built far from public transit versus near it in the past two decades, according to a 2023 Urban Institute study.

In Massachusetts, 19 communities still haven’t created new zones. Some unsuccessfully sued the state to halt the law, while residents rejected new zones in others. Lexington eventually shrank its zone from 227 acres to 90 acres after residents complained.

“If we allow the state to come in and dictate how we zone, what else are they going to come in and dictate?” said Anthony Renzoni, a selectman from the town of Holden, which sued the state and is drawing up a new zoning map after residents rejected the first one.

In Los Angeles, the six-story complex where Smith lives in East Hollywood is home to 300 new residents since opening in February. The area has gained a Filipino grocery and a medical clinic. A farmers market is set to open early next year.

Half of the building’s 187 units are reserved for formerly homeless residents like Smith, who had been living in a rundown motel via a voucher and before that on the street. She’s been assigned a case worker and is getting help with basic life skills, budgeting and finding work.

Equally important: Smith, who can’t afford a car, doesn’t need one.

“I’m very, very fortunate to be somewhere where the transit takes me where I want to go,” she said. “Where I want to go is not that far.”

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In California, builder’s remedy has become a handy tool for housing developers to skirt local zoning rules. Now, Gov. Tina Kotek is weighing whether to bring the policy to Oregon.

Such a rule would add to other housing policy tools the governor has enacted in Oregon, such as establishing a statewide housing production goal and requiring each city to produce a housing needs analysis.

In California, builder’s remedy allows housing developers to bypass local zoning if a city is out of compliance with its housing element — a formal, adopted plan for where in a city housing may be built. Under Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, the state has aggressively pursued enforcement of the rule for cities without certified housing elements.

Builder’s remedy was added to California’s law books in 1990 but was little used until the 2020s. In recent years, California developers — backed by state leaders — have used builder’s remedy to advance projects in cities that have rejected land use approvals for housing projects or dragged their feet in the process.

“I’d say it’s the number one tool that’s led to the creation of housing in California in the last 10 years,” said Ezra Hammer, a Jordan Ramis attorney and shareholder who has practiced in California and Oregon.

Past Oregon governors have looked to California and Washington for housing policy, and Kotek is following suit. Builder’s remedy was recommended by the Multifamily Housing Development Workgroup, which was convened this spring by Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson.

Upon the recommendations’ release in May, Kotek “committed to exploring” how builder’s remedy “could work to bolster housing production in Oregon.”

The work group’s builder’s remedy recommendation came alongside other well-worn housing policies such as cutting permitting wait times and encouraging office-to-housing conversions.

“Anything that’s helping clear the decks and make way for approval of additional housing, especially in communities where local officials are not keeping up with housing production, is a good thing in our state,” said Sarah Zahn, managing director of Security Properties. Zahn was a member of the housing policy work group.

Developers have pushed for builder’s remedy projects in cities such as Beverly Hills, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica. The Golden State’s largest cities — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco — have compliant housing elements.

“There’s an inherent friction between states that have a housing crisis and want to see housing built immediately, and cities that want to maintain local control over zoning decisions,” said Spencer Kallick, a land use attorney with Allen Matkins in Century City, California, who has worked with builder’s remedy developers.

“Some cities get it and understand that they need to relax certain zoning standards to provide much-needed housing close to jobs and transit,” Kallick added. “Other cities should get it, but for community and political needs they are more reticent to give up local control.”

Kallick said California cities that do not have compliant housing elements fall into three categories: cities with small staffs and meager financial resources to update their housing element, cities that don’t mind builder’s remedy taking effect to encourage housing and, finally, cities that have battled the state over their housing elements.

At least 20 percent of units in builder’s remedy developments must be affordable. Developers have used it to propose projects such as One Redondo, which would bring more than 2,000 housing units and mixed-use development to Redondo Beach. The city has resisted construction of housing on the site of a defunct power plant, and the developer has launched a series of lawsuits.

Kallick warned that builder’s remedy is not a panacea, and it still requires great patience to get projects built.

“The developers who are doing builder’s remedy projects are ones that deeply understand the intricacies of the law and have the commitment to see projects through because they see the need for new housing in the state,” Kallick said.

Housing experts said it remains to be seen how builder’s remedy would work in Oregon. In California, not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) politics remain hugely influential, and opposition to development is sometimes boosted by concentrated wealth among residents.

Builder’s remedy probably doesn’t make sense outside of the Willamette Valley population centers, Hammer said.

“Builder’s remedy is going to be a tool in a few places,” he said. “It’s really built around multifamily housing. That’s going to work in Portland, maybe some of the larger suburbs around Portland, and it’ll work in Eugene. And that’s it.”

Oregon developers will have to wait at least until 2026 for the state to adopt builder’s remedy. Legislators did not consider it during this year’s session.

Developers have expressed interest in building townhomes or garden-style apartments that currently run afoul of Portland’s minimums for floor area ratio, Hammer said. Those regulations dictate building size relative to lot size.

City regulators, Hammer said, have “taken this tool that’s built for extremely hot markets and overlaid it on portions of the city where we would be blessed to have housing development.”

Builder’s remedy could sweep aside that type of zoning restriction, Hammer said.

“Portland would be ripe for it,” he said.

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