A few key excerpts:
The Bay Area currently has thousands of potentially hazardous soft-story buildings, with tens of thousands of units. Damage to soft-story buildings has caused significant economic loss to building owners and has also resulted in fatalities and serious injuries to tenants during recent California earthquakes.
[...] The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently passed a program to incentivize voluntary seismic retrofits. This program offers owners an expedited permit process and waived permitting fees if they voluntarily retrofit their buildings. Those who choose to take advantage of the program will also be exempt from any mandated retrofitting for 15 years following the construction. Owners will certainly want to take advantage of these incentives as the Mayor’s Office has put together a task force, which includes SFAA representatives, to design a future mandatory program for soft-story seismic upgrades. Code-mandated work remains eligible for a 100% capital improvement passthrough if proper paperwork is presented to and approved by the San Francisco Rent Board.
Deciding to retrofit is a difficult decision for a building owner to make, because the costs of retrofitting are clearly evident and demanding, while the benefits of a seismic retrofit lie far in the future, when an earthquake strikes. Contact a structural engineer or general contractor experienced in soft-story building strengthening to help you determine the magnitude of capital improvement costs associated with a seismic retrofit.
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