Attachment A
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND STUDIES
AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
The City of San Jose has been actively developing a "soft story," or WFTS, 1 seismic mitigation program since 2018, continuing earlier work that started soon after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Currently, the City envisions an overall program with two coordinated parts - a citywide part expected to address at least a thousand collapse-prone buildings, and a FEMAfunded part that will partially subsidize or rebate some owners' retrofit costs. In 2022, the City contracted with a team led by David Bonowitz, S.E. to help develop both programs.
The purpose of this report is to present, in a comprehensive and narrative format, the information compiled by our team under contract to the City. The purpose of that information is to inform the policy-making process by summarizing and contextualizing data expected to be of interest to City staff, the City Council, and the public.
1. Wood-frame target story (WFTS) inventory
Chapter 1 summarizes and contextualizes the City's inventory ofWFTS buildings. Inventory comes first so that policy decisions can be informed by city-specific data. • San Jose's permanent housing stock comprises about 206,000 buildings containing about 351,000 units. Of those, about 17,000 buildings and 156,000 units are in multi-unit (three or more) apartment and condominium buildings. (Section 1.2.1) • Buildings constructed before about 1990 with wood-frame target stories (WFTS), sometimes called "soft story" buildings, pose a widely recognized seismic risk to tenants, owners, and the City. San Jose has between 2,600 and 3,600 such buildings, containing between 18,000 and 25,000 units - 5 to 7 percent of its total housing stock. (Section
1.2.1)
o The WFTS portion of the housing stock is significantly larger than the portion made up by buildings with other common seismic deficiencies for which mitigation programs have already been implemented, including cripple wall houses, room-over-garage houses, unreinforced masonry buildings, and mobile homes. (Section 1.3.1)
o In some neighborhoods, the pre-1990 WFTS buildings comprise up to 20 percent or more of the local housing stock, comparable with other Bay Area cities that have already adopted mandatory WFTS retrofit programs. (Sections 1.2.3 and
1.3.2)
• As a group, the pre-1990 WFTS buildings have the following characteristics, among others, relevant to the development of a citywide mitigation program:
1 See the Terminology section of this report for explanations of key terms, including "soft story," "target story," and "wood-frame target story" or WFTS. While the public and many City documents refer to "soft story" buildings and programs, this report generally uses the acronym WFTS for technical reasons explained there.