Robert Sayegh is a car-owning Angeleno who rarely drives.
The 36-year-old jewelry maker, who lives upstairs from Metro Red Line's Hollywood and Western station, commutes by subway to his downtown job. With so many shops near his home, running errands is often just a stroll across the street. He almost never uses his car on weekdays anymore.
"Everything you need, you have it all around," said Sayegh, spreading his arms as if bear-hugging his apartment complex, which opened about a year ago. "The only reason I live in Hollywood is because of the subway."
Tired of the hassles of driving or drawn to a more urban lifestyle, people like Sayegh are helping fuel a housing boom near transit stations in Southern California and across the nation. In Los Angeles County, more than $4 billion worth of new projects near subway or light-rail stations have either opened this year or are underway. The projects are expected to add more than 6,000 residential units over the next four years, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Some development is spurred in part by public subsidies and new zoning rules that allow greater density near subway or train stops. But shifting demographics are also propelling the trend, experts say.
Over the next two decades, urban areas across the nation will have swelling ranks of seniors who don't drive, low-income immigrants without cars and childless singles and couples who prefer smaller housing near nightlife, according to a recent nationwide study by the Oakland-based Center for Transit-Oriented Development.
"For many Americans, the good life means not having to drive a car to work," said Jenna Dorn, chief of the Federal Transit Administration, which sponsored the study. "Their vision of the American dream does not involve a car in the suburbs."
The study identifies five metropolitan areas -- Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago -- as the hottest markets for transit-oriented housing in the next 20 years. In Los Angeles, the demand for such housing is expected to increase fourfold.
Transit villages are being built or planned in Pasadena, Long Beach, downtown Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Covina and Hollywood.
The pocket of East Hollywood where Sayegh lives -- home to many Armenian, Russian and Thai immigrants -- is often cited as a leading example of how transit-centered development can change a community.
