
Now Hiring
A dwindling immigrant workforce will have significant impacts on industry vitality and wages — the question is to what extent
The departure of long-established but undocumented Mexicans from California is a signal — along with other government data from the southwest border — that the flow of unauthorized immigration is shifting direction, perhaps dramatically.

Students Design Cutting-Edge Solar Home
Two-year process by UCD students to construct house culminates with national competition this fall
Students at UC Davis are building a house. Not just any house, but a solar-powered house, one with the potential to be as affordable as it is innovative and, above all, energy efficient.

Boomers Nearing End of Life Seen Helping California Tax Revenue
The winding down for California’s baby boomers may end up boosting their home cities.

Raising the Stakes
Wilton Rancheria Casino could be an economic boon for both Elk Grove and the only Native American tribe in Sacramento County — if it ever gets built
While the project has support from city officials, some residents and special interest groups continue their attempts to stall it. Regardless, plans for the casino move forward.

San Franciscans Fleeing Pricey Housing Fuel Boom in Sacramento
As the cost of daily life tests the bounds of gravity in San Francisco, a beneficiary has emerged 90 miles away.

Daylight Savings
As financial incentives get phased out, local utilities and industry experts grapple with the future of solar power
This year marks the deadline for California’s 10-year bet on solar roofs. In 2006, the state launched the “Million Solar Roofs” vision, pumping $3.2 billion into incentive programs. The plan was to build one million solar roofs, or the equivalent thereof, generating 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2017.

Up My Alley
Local eateries aim to spruce up Sacramento’s dark corridors
If you imagine a humming city as a living body, the conventional alleyway might be the large intestine. It’s a lonely grey loading zone, a collection point for garbage, and a covert space for drug use and violence. But as U.S. cities grow denser, urban passageways that were once ignored and crumbling are enjoying a renaissance. Alleyway activation is a designer buzzword for modernizing utilitarian corridors into well-lit public spaces.

Back and Forward: Kimberly Garza on Making Vibrant Public Spaces
Kimberly Garza, a landscape architect and director of ATLAS Lab, offers her insight into how underutilized urban spaces can be transformed.

Tiny Houses Offer One Solution for Housing the Homeless
Communities in the Capital Region are struggling with the increasing numbers of homeless in their streets and parks and have realized that the problem has to be addressed. Local programs help by providing meals and winter shelter. But the primary need is year-round, permanent supportive housing, because living in tents or on park benches is not a sustainable way of life.

Resurgent Housing Market Brings Labor Shortage into Focus for Homebuilders
Through the first four months of 2017, our industry has completed an impressive 1,888 new home sales. Underscoring the uptick in the homebuilding industry’s economic fortunes, in March we sold more than 500 — 527 to be exact — homes in a single month for the first time in a decade.