Seismic retrofit funding available for homeowners

New state program will help pay for reinforcing dwellings against jolts

The Big One is coming. And thousands of homes across the Bay Area aren't ready for it.

If your house is among those that aren't yet earthquake-safe, you may qualify for a new state program to help pay for seismic retrofits. Starting in late April, homeowners in Oakland, Berkeley

and San Francisco can apply for grants to reinforce single-family homes with a vulnerable “soft story” on the ground floor.

The most common example is an older house with a garage below the main living area, said Janiele Maffei, chief mitigation officer for the California Earthquake Authority, the agency overseeing the program.

“You've taken out all the elements that resist earthquake forces — and that's the walls,” she said.

Many soft-story houses can be reinforced with steel or wood, but homeowners often balk at the hefty price tag — which can range from $14,000 to $27,000, Maffei said. The new pilot program, using $5 million in federal funding, is set to provide at least 300 grants of up to $13,000 each. The funding will also cover administrative costs. Homeowners in Los Angeles and Pasadena can apply for the same pot of money.

Exactly how many single-family homes in the Bay Area and across California need soft-story upgrades is unclear. But a 2016 report by the Association of Bay Area Governments estimated 18,000 residential buildings of all types in the region have ground stories “that have a tendency to collapse when shaken hard enough.”

Maffei said the hope is to apply for more Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to expand the fledgling program to additional cities, including San Jose and others in the South Bay. As a model, she pointed to an ongoing state program to retrofit crawl spaces in older homes