Met Council presents 2024 development‑along‑transit report: 44% of multifamily permit value near high‑frequency transit

Michael Krantz, senior manager for Transit‑Oriented Development, and Amy Yoder, a planner in the Transit Oriented Development Office, presented highlights from the Council's 2024 Development Trends Along Transit report, which uses permit data through 2023.

The report found that since 2009, developments near high‑frequency transit accounted for about 44% of the region's multifamily permit value and 44% of commercial permit value while covering only about 3.4% of the region's land area. Amy Yoder said, "In 2023 we saw 42% of the region's permit value located near high frequency transit with 4,180 multifamily units." She stressed that the dataset for the report is permit data and that the most recent full year available in the report is 2023.

Yoder described how the analysis defines "near transit": a half‑mile stationary buffer around fixed guideway stations and a quarter‑mile buffer around high‑frequency local bus routes, plus temporal rules that count permits only after transit projects have passed certain Council milestones and were likely included in developer decision‑making. She told the Council the buffers and timing are applied consistently to affordable‑housing production analyses.

The report also found that about 51% of affordable multifamily units built between 2014 and 2023 are near high‑frequency transit, and that 77% of deeply affordable units are located near high‑frequency transit, a figure Yoder said reflects prioritization of deeply affordable units near transit and an increase in affordable production outside urban cores.

Michael Krantz said the location of new housing matters beyond supply: "The development trends that Amy shared are really an economic development story, but they're also more than that," he said, linking the pattern to reduced vehicle miles traveled, lower household transportation costs, and regional greenhouse‑gas emissions reductions. He showed maps indicating substantially higher property tax revenue per acre along developed transit corridors between 2006 and 2023 and said that, when coupled with Urban 3's cost‑of‑service work, transit‑oriented development often generates more revenue per acre than the cost of providing services.

Council members pressed for clarifications and follow‑up data. Council Member Carter and others asked about buffers and the treatment of different transit investments; Yoder explained the half‑mile and quarter‑mile rules and the timing filter. Lisa Barajas, executive director of Community Development, responded to criticisms in recent media coverage by noting those pieces often use short time windows and can miss longer‑term trends: "They're often looking at very short time frames," she said, adding that the Council's longer time series shows spikes and declines and a broader context for current permit counts.

Several council members asked when 2024 permit data would be available; staff said updated permit reporting should be available later in the summer and that the office is building web dashboards so partners can explore permit and tax base maps. Clayton Watercott of the TOD office was credited for the maps and dashboards shown to the Council.

The presentation was received as an information item; the Council did not take formal action on the report at this meeting.