#housing-production

#housing-production

The City Council direction, now led by Mayor Vicki Veenker and Vice Mayor Greer Stone, marks a departure from previous agenda-setting retreats by replacing broader ideals with concrete topics. With Manhattan Beach Council member Amy Howorth serving as a facilitator for the meeting, which took place at the Mitchell Park Library, the council worked to clarify the terms "values," "priorities" and "objectives" before voting on its priorities for the year.

Immigrant laborers play a key role in the housing pipeline, especially for the nation's top homebuilding metros, according to a new study from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Research showed a disproportionately high share of foreign-born workers active in the construction trades nationally in 2024. While immigrants made up one in five workers nationally, they composed one in three workers in the construction trades sector.

California YIMBY, an organization founded eight years ago to promote housing construction in response to an ever-increasing gap between demand and supply, held a victory party in San Francisco recently. Welcome to the most victorious of California YIMBY's victory parties, Brian Hanlon, founder and CEO of the organization, told attendees. Its acronym (Yes In My Backyard) symbolizes its years-long battle with NIMBYs (Not in My Backyard), people and groups who have long thwarted housing projects by pressuring local governments that control land use.

Yvonne Perez, a homeowner in the Richmond since 2017, said at the meeting that she understands her neighbors who are concerned about views being obstructed, or fear change. She used to be one of them. "I wasn't sure what to make of the upzoning plan. I didn't want the Richmond to become downtown with all the high-rises," she said. "But once I understood what it actually meant, more families, more younger generations, it changed my perspective."