A plan to spend $46 million to seismically retrofit buildings with affordable-housing units appears to have been defeated by voters.
The measure, proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, would have The City issue a $46.15 million bond to pay for the seismic retrofitting of 125 government-funded affordable-housing soft-story buildings and 31 single-room-occupancy buildings.
The buildings — the residences of mostly low-income families — are among the most earthquake-vulnerable structures in San Francisco and are known as soft-story buildings. The City has estimated that there are 2,800 soft-story structures, those built prior to 1974 and susceptible to collapse during a quake.
A recent analysis found that if privately owned buildings are not seismically retrofitted, a strong earthquake could result in 1,000 deaths, $54 billion in property damage, a $15 billion hit to businesses and 85,000 housing units lost.
