San Jose's Residential Seismic Safety Program

1995 POPULATION: 845,991
1995 HOUSING UNITS: 270,080
Single Family Units: 165,840 (61.4%)
Multi-Family Units: 104,240 (38.6%)
KEY CONTACT: Frannie Winslow or John Lane
San Jose Office of Emergency Services
Phone: (408) 277-4595

Photo Courtesy of Degenkolb Associates

The City of San Jose’s Residential Seismic Safety Program is remarkable because San Jose is the first city to make a special effort to attack a particularly thorny issue--that of multi-family housing. The City’s effort to prepare these residents, and encourage retrofitting apartments over garages that tend to collapse during earthquakes, is ambitious and particularly notable.

Because apartment buildings with “soft” first floors are prone to significant earthquake damage, the City’s Office of Emergency Services has evaluated the community’s residential building stock and determined both which building types are vulnerable and what appropriate retrofit actions can be done. This information, including building age, configuration, and structural data will be used with geographic risk data provided by ABAG’s “On SHAKY Ground” maps to determine priorities for upgrading the multi-unit buildings. Small-scale structural reinforcing of the highest risk buildings could result in substantial savings in damage, potential neighborhood blight, and homelessness.

This program was started with a grant from the City’s Community Development Block Grant Program. The complete program has two parts: outreach and safety. Outreach efforts will center on the hiring of a consulting structural engineer to review retrofit recommendations. These recommendations will be coordinated with the Building Division of Planning, as well as the Housing Department, to make sure they conform to all requirements and procedures. Some technical assistance will be available through workshops. Future efforts will be guided by follow-up surveys and the tracking of contracts.

Although legal, political, technical, and economic questions remain, this new program has the potential to be very effective.

This page was last updated 8/20/03 by jbp.