Organized Labor

Funds Will Pay Union Workers for Seismic Retrofitting

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last month to place a measure on the November ballot that asks voters to support a $46 million bond to finance seismic retrofits of multi-story wood-framed buildings vulnerable to earthquakes. The measure would mandate that building owners make the necessary improvements, and would provide low interest or no interest loans or grants for retrofitting “soft-story” wood frame structures—multi-level properties with a store or garage on the first floor that include small hotels and affordable housing units.

The proposed bond measure applies to multi-family rental units built before 1979. There are between 2,500 and 3,500 buildings throughout the city that are at high risk. Many such structures were damaged in the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.

“This will be really good for the trades,” Debra Walker, who serves as a tenant representative on the Building Inspection Commission, told Organized Labor. She said that the Department of Building Inspection (DBI) has already done an inventory of buildings and will send letters out to owners and notify small contractors and building trades unions. She said the DBI will have funds in the program by early spring if the bond measure passes. Work would include installing moment frames, shear walls or cantilevers, or strengthening and reinforcing interior walls.

Estimates for the needed repairs range from $9,000 to $28,000 per residential unit, according to a report commissioned by the city in 2009. The report recommended mandatory retrofits for the 2,800 highest-risk buildings. While the total costs could amount to as much as $260 million, the report notes that the repairs could prevent $1.5 billion in damages following a major quake. The Department of Building Safety estimated that if a 7.3-magnitude earthquake were to hit the San Andreas Fault, up to 850 soft-story buildings would collapse and up to 2,400 would be uninhabitable for months.

A provision that mandates payment of prevailing wages for the construction crews was added to the measure by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd. Many of the units that will need to be made more structurally sound are or were subsidized by the City.Prevailing wages are required on public works projects in the city.

Walker said the prevailing wage requirement was also part of a program in 1991 that required seismic upgrades for buildings with unreinforced masonry. Only $100 million of that $350 million bond was used; the new measure proposes to shift those unused funds into the new program for the wood-frame structures.

The bond also provides funds to cover the costs of temporarily relocating some of the ground-floor business that would be impacted by the seismic upgrades. The program would be administered through the Mayor’s Office of Housing. The city has also applied for $3 million over the next five years from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has also proposed the creation of a special citywide tax district to help property owners borrow money for the retrofit work at a reduced interest rate. Money borrowed would be paid back to the special tax district through property taxes, amortized over 20 to 25 years.

Bay City News reported in February that the Mayor told a meeting of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute that, “There’s no doubt we’re going to require retrofitting. It just has to happen.” The news service noted, “Newsom’s office has had a voluntary retrofitting program in place since before the financial crisis, but even after the city offered to waive fees and expedite the permits, few building owners stepped forward, he said. About a year ago, he announced that he supported mandatory retrofits.”