BHR NEWSLETTER

Spring 2008 Issue

A Tale of Two Cities
Innovative ordinances make seismic retrofits cheaper

By William Rodarmor

Following Berkeley’s lead, Oakland has become the second East Bay city to refund part of its transfer tax on residential sales to homeowners who retrofit their residences. That’s a good thing, because Oakland homes urgently need strengthening: Only 15 percent of the city’s homes built before modern earthquake codes have been reinforced against quake damage. As usual, the problem is money. Retrofit construction can cost from $7,000 to $30,000, and a building permit costs an extra 10 percent of that cost. When homeowners skip getting a permit, the seismic work isn’t inspected and there is no way to know if it meets city standards. (Also, if the work was done without any permits, that also must be disclosed to buyers when the house is sold.)

To help correct this problem, Oakland enacted the Homeowner Voluntary Seismic Safety Incentive ordinance in July 2007. If you own a one- or two-story residence (single family or duplex) and want to do seismic retrofit work, your permit will now cost a flat $250. If you are buying such a residence, the city will reimburse part of the cost of your retrofit work: up to half of 1 percent of the purchase price or $5,000, whichever is less. To fund the retrofit program, Oakland has set aside $500,000 from its real property transfer tax.

Berkeley Pays Out

Berkeley and Oakland’s ordinances differ in the details, but both are voluntary programs designed to encourage owners to safeguard their investment in their homes. And of course they make the cities safer in case of a quake. Enacted in 1992, Berkeley’s ordinance applies to residences built before the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and has produced impressive results. “More than half the houses in Berkeley have had some sort of seismic strengthening at least once under the program,” says Dan Lambert of the city’s building department.

The dollar numbers are equally impressive. In fiscal 2006, Berkeley rebated $1,140,000 on 250 properties from its transfer tax fund, says Lambert. In fiscal 2007 it disbursed $380,000 on 92 properties. The drop in payouts is due to a tightening of building standards instituted in February 2007, he says. “In the past, if the work fell into the category of seismic strengthening, we didn’t require engineering plans. So as long as you weren’t cutting through beams or hurting the building, we would approve the work.”

The city started hearing about quality problems, however. The Contra Costa Times ran a series on retrofit projects in Berkeley and Oakland (“They had building officials crawling under the houses,” says Lambert) and found that a third of the retrofits were very good, a third had problems, and a third were no good at all. As a result, proposed retrofits in Berkeley must now at least meet a simplified set of standards called Plan Set A, or come with a custom plan designed by a certified engineer or architect. Says Lambert: “We decided we wanted to make sure both the city and the building owners were getting their money’s worth.”

Oakland Learns from Experience

Sue Piper isn’t ashamed to admit that in drafting Oakland ordinances, she sometimes copies ideas from her neighbor to the north. “When you steal from one person, it’s plagiarism,” she says. “But when you steal from a lot of people, it’s research.” Piper is a policy analyst for Oakland Councilwoman Jean Quan, and a driving force behind the city’s new seismic ordinance. She was struck by the fact that so many more of Berkeley’s homes had been retrofitted, compared to Oakland’s, she says. “We had to face the fact that when the Big One hits, we could lose a third of our housing.” 

Piper also learned from Berkeley’s troubles with sloppy retrofit work. “In Oakland we actually put seismic standards into our building code,” she says. “We’re the first city to do that.” Oakland is also promoting statewide legislation to establish a separate license for contractors who do retrofit work, and to help them get insurance. Says Piper: “We are working with ABAG,”¾the Association of Bay Area Governments¾“Berkeley, and other cities along the Hayward Fault to make sure that people are getting what they paid for.”

Living by the Rules

No municipality likes to give away money¾even in a good cause¾and Oakland’s generosity comes with a few strings. First, the retrofit work must meet the seismic strengthening standards spelled out in the municipal code. At least for people in the flatlands, that’s less of a hassle than it sounds. Typical wood-frame houses on level ground are covered by Plan Set A, and their owners don’t need engineered plans. But many other residences¾homes on steep slopes, for example¾aren’t covered by Plan Set A. ABAG is developing plan sets for houses built on hills, houses on narrow lots, and multi-family apartments built over garages, but in the meantime, those buildings require custom retrofit plans.

Second, the Oakland ordinance has strict deadlines. New buyers must apply for the program within 60 days of recording the transfer of ownership, and the retrofit work must be completed within a year of filing for the permit. Those deadlines have generated a lot questions, says Jim Oakley, the building department’s process coordinator. “You’ve got to hurry them along,” he says of new applicants, “because they may be within a day of the filing expiration.” The important thing is to get the application into the system, he says. “We’ll go ahead and take it, and if they need to get engineered plans, we’ll give them extra time.”

But even if custom plans must be drawn, Oakley says buyers shouldn’t have any trouble meeting the deadlines. They have six months after the application date to submit their plans, and “an engineer can certainly whack out those plans in six months,” he says. “Contractors who handle this sort of stuff do it every day. Bam, bam, bam! That’s all they do.”

For more information:

Berkeley: Go to www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/finance/lowincome&seismic/transfertx&seismicrefund.htm.

Oakland: Go to www.oaklandnet.com and find “Chapter 15.30.050 Voluntary Seismic Strengthening for Residential Buildings.”

William Rodarmor is a writer, editor, and French translator in Berkeley, California.

Homes Not Covered by Plan Set A

These types of houses are not covered by the simplified standards known as Plan Set A, and require engineered retrofit designs:

• Homes on steep slopes

• Hillside homes with poles or columns embedded in the ground

• Cripple walls higher than 4 feet

• Buildings taller than two stories

• One-story buildings with more than 2000 square feet of floor area, and two-story buildings with more than 3000 square feet of floor area

• Buildings erected on a concrete slab-on-grade

• Clay or concrete roof tiles with mortared edges

• Building framing other than wood

• Houses with brick or stone veneer more than 4 feet high

Oakland's Bureaucracy Made Easy

It's a good idea for Oakland homeowners and buyers to meet with the city's building department early, to be sure their retrofit plan meets municipal standards. Bring photographs of all sides of the house taken from as far away as possible to show the kind of elevation, size of the house, slopes, type of structure, etc. also bring the approximate measurements of the house.

For the Flat Permit Fee: Bring in a retrofit plan when you apply for the permit to see if your building is compatible with Plan Set A. The flat $250 fee applies even if engineering is required. But if you must do additional work¾like replacing a foundation¾that work will require a separate permit, for the usual 8-10 percent fee.

For the Incentive Reimbursement Program: Apply for a permit within 60 days of recording the transfer of ownership with the county, and bring a certified copy of the recorded instrument of ownership transfer, and an approved document establishing the purchase price of the residence. The city must approve the retrofit plan within 180 days. Retrofitting must be completed within one year of filing for the permit.

For more information: Go to www.oaklandnet.com and find "Chapter 15.30.050 Voluntary Seismic Strengthening for Residential Buildings."

See Plan Set A at quake.abag.ca.gov/fixit.

Call the Oakland Building Department at 510-238-3891.

Email your questions to Process Coordinator Jim Oakley at joakley@oaklandnet.com