Soft Story Retrofit: How and why it affects you!
The Earthquake Safety Implementation Program created the Mandatory Soft Floor Retrofit Program as a multi-year, community-based effort in 2013. It was originally implemented to ensure the resiliency and safety of San Francisco housing by retrofitting multi-family units older with wooden structure. in soft ground conditions. However, regulation has come to Los Angeles.
Many apartment, commercial and residential properties have what is known as a soft floor condition. The term is a description of a building that has habitable room(s) above a porch, carport, or garage area that is not specifically designed to transmit lateral or shear forces to the previous story.
Many California counties are drafting ordinances requiring all soft-story buildings to be retrofitted. The City of Los Angeles, in cooperation with the Structure Engineers of Southern California and others, began developing a report in January 2014 outlining a plan to create a seismic program for the City. The intention is to improve the resilience of the city in case of a seismic event.
The ‘Resilience by Design’ report was issued on December 8, 2014. Included in the plan is a recommendation to seismically assess and strengthen the city’s multi-family soft-story buildings. The City uses internal resources to identify soft-story buildings affected by the program.
Under the law, landlords have seven years to fix the problem. Officials have identified about 13,500 apartment complexes that they suspect buildings are in need of repair. The need for redevelopment affects certain neighborhoods more than others.
The numbers, on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley, seem overwhelming. More than half of the buildings that were cited as seismically vulnerable are located in these two regions. Nearly 3,200 apartment buildings in the San Fernando Valley need renovation. More than 75,000 rental units are affected.
The Palms neighborhood on the Westside is particularly vulnerable. The six-block stretch of Mentone Avenue has more than 90 structures on the city’s list of buildings in need of repair. These neighborhoods experienced mid-century housing booms and fell prey to mid-century apartment design that has proven deadly when major earthquakes strike.
Soft-story buildings have rental units above the parking spaces that are supported by a few vertical columns instead of a solid foundation. If an earthquake were to occur, the columns could buckle. The building would pancake and fall directly onto whatever is below.
Tenants residing in buildings that have been cited are particularly interested in the listing. Not only your security is affected, but also your finances. There is an outrageous demand for new homes in Los Angeles. Construction equipment is barely keeping up with demand, sending prices skyrocketing. This has been extremely expensive for the owners of these properties.
However, LA cannot afford to lose rental units due to an earthquake. The Northridge earthquake serves as a reminder of what an earthquake can do to the Los Angeles real estate market. The 1994 earthquake took 49,000 apartments off the market in a single morning.
Mods are not cheap. The cost ranges from $60,000 to $300,000 to bring a soft floor apartment up to standard. Someone has to pay for the repairs. The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to allow landlords to pass half of their remodel costs to tenants. A $38 monthly increase in rent over a ten-year period will help pay for retrofit costs, seismic assessments, and interest on loans obtained for retrofit construction. Still, modernization turns out to be a daunting task.
Being on the list does not automatically mean that the landlord must modernize the building. The list is a compilation of examining city records and a door-to-door search for vulnerable buildings by inspectors. Closer inspection may reveal that a property meets the standards necessary to forego modernization.
The submission of modernization compliance orders began in May. Large apartment owners received the first orders. A large apartment building has at least 16 units. Owners who have multi-family buildings with fewer than 16 units receive the orders below.
Owners have several options. Within two years, demolish the building, submit modernization plans to the city, or demonstrate that the building structure can withstand the seismic activity of an earthquake. The update must be completed within seven years of receipt of the enforcement order.
Rent increases to tenants will have a detrimental impact on their financial stability, but keeping tenants safer in the event of an earthquake is more important. Everyone’s fear is a sudden demand for mandatory retrofits, which will drive up prices for building contractors and qualified structural engineers.