Californians can get $3,000 grants to retrofit homes for earthquake safety, and the city of San Francisco is opening the first of its new Safe City funds to developers who install code-enforcements for earthquake safety into new high-rises.
San Francisco has set aside $100 million for this effort, which it will use to award $150,000 grants for each new high-rise that has been retrofitted with earthquake-safety features. This should allow all new multifamily projects to get started right away, and the city says it will help with other costs to make the funding worthwhile.
San Francisco has a long history with earthquakes, starting with the 1906 quake that killed hundreds of its residents. Since then, the city has been focused on preventing future quakes and strengthening its buildings against disasters.
Over the past few weeks, the city has been holding meetings with code-enforcing experts and representatives of building owners to educate them on what’s new, and to set priorities for future funds. This week, it is holding a meeting with code-enforcing specialists to discuss what’s happening in other municipalities, and to plan for next year’s effort.
“I have been impressed by the range and depth of the technical professionals that are now in San Francisco,” said Andrew LeGard, the code-enforcing specialist who will be participating in the meeting, in an email. “You could find an entire class of experts from all around the world in a room together—from Chile and China and even Norway and the United Kingdom, and they’d still be able to work better than I can, because there would be so much of the world’s knowledge of code enforcement, and all the different approaches to code enforcement, going on in the room. This is pretty amazing.”
The other cities that have responded to San Francisco’s request include Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. San Francisco said
