"I asked how things were going, and if there were any problems finding enough workers because of ongoing immigration raids. "Oh, yeah," said one worker, shaking his head. "Everybody's worried." The other said that when fresh concrete is poured on a job this big, you need a crew of 10 or more, but that's been hard to come by. "We're still working," he said. "But as you can see, it's just going very slowly.""
"Eight months after thousands of homes were destroyed by wildfires, Altadena is still a ways off from any major rebuilding, and so is Pacific Palisades. But immigration raids have hammered the California economy, including the construction industry. And the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling this week that green-lights racial profiling has raised new fears that "deportations will deplete the construction workforce," as the UCLA Anderson Forecast warned us in March."
After wildfires destroyed thousands of homes eight months earlier, rebuilding in Altadena and Pacific Palisades remains slow due to labor shortages. Immigration raids and the Supreme Court ruling that green-lights racial profiling have increased fears of deportation among construction workers. An estimated 25% to 40% of construction workers are immigrants, and deportations or fear of deportation reduce crew sizes and slow project completion. Tariffs and trade wars are making building supplies scarcer and more expensive, compounding delays. Slower construction timelines mean fewer people employed and deepen the housing shortage.
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