Ribbon Cutting Celebrates New Mixed-Use Affordable Housing at Vermont/Santa Monica Metro Station
Today community leaders celebrated by cutting a ceremonial ribbon for the Santa Monica & Vermont Apartments, a transit-oriented mixed-use affordable housing project located in East Hollywood. The new Santa Monica & Vermont development provides 185 affordable units. Half are permanent supportive housing for people who have experienced homelessness; half are housing set aside for low-income households.
The project broke ground in 2022. It has been open for about a year and is already serving over 300 residents. The grand opening had been planned for last June, but was postponed when federal ICE raids initially terrorized Southern California.
Santa Monica & Vermont was developed by the Little Tokyo Service Center as a joint development with Metro; each entity owns parts of the land the development is on. The new housing is immediately adjacent to, nearly on top of, the Metro B Line Vermont/Santa Monica Boulevard Station.
Little Tokyo Service Center Director of Real Estate Debbie Chen described Santa Monica & Vermont as a “housing plus plus plus project” as it includes five stories of housing atop 20,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space, and that’s not all. With state Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) funding, the project improves transit, with new DASH buses, bus shelters, sidewalks, crosswalks, and more.
Additional project funds came from L.A. City Measure ULA and Measure HHH.
The real story of Santa Monica & Vermont is how it is already improving peoples’ lives. At today’s ribbon-cutting, resident Ginger Henriquez related that her family’s “new home has brought us stability – financially, emotionally and mentally.”
“In our home we are no longer just getting by, Henriquez proclaimed, “we are planning for our future.”
Below are additional resident testimonial videos, shared by LTSC, and photos of the handsome new mixed-use development.
https://youtu.be/hEA-lzBZzbM?si=TLppuawg29Pq8Zpe
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHFD2QGy_AP/
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