Mountain View Soft-Story Study and other relevant materials can be found here:

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Definitely a good policy for the safety of residents and also to minimize potential earthquake damage in Mountain View. If the owners refuse to make the retrofits, then their properties should be leveled and replaced with upscale, modern housing.

Time to Raze all these buildings. To old, rent control, no longer makes sense to keep them.

Council needs to address the zoning of these properties. The properties on the list should automatically be zoned the highest number of units allowed. Each of these properties should not have to go thru one by one asking approval first to rezone them to the highest density allowed.

This should be done at the same time and in the same approval process as mandating any retrofit work.

Did anyone have an estimate of what this would cost? Overall and on a per residence basis. Probably varies from one building to another, but would be nice to know what general scope of cost.

To retrofit any building to today's code, does not mean that it is "Earthquake proof"

If things are built to code, it does not mean that there will be no damage in a major quake. It means that they are designed to hopefully prevent a collapse of the building so people can get out. It also means that the building could still be a total loss after a large quake with the damage it sustained and will have to be torn down.

Mtn View has done so many progressive things in the last few years, not all I've agreed with. We should do something progressive/creative to save lives in the event of the next big one. Find the money and get it done.

I hope the owners of older buildings esp along California and Latham will instead raze the building and replace with modern housing. This will improve the schools, too.
As a next step hopefully the new council will take care of the RV problem, and MV will finally become a city it deserves to be.

Any seismic retrofit to a property requires a structural engineer's stamp on the drawings. That alone guarantees these older buildings will be over-engineered with added sheer walls, buttresses, bracing, etc. Obsolescence is a fact of life in real estate. It's one of the first principals of real estate appraisal.

And the city council hasn't even tackled the issue of fire sprinklers in older buildings as Redwood City has. Many insurance companies are cancelling coverage on older buildings in Mt. View built in the '60's using electrical systems manufactured by; FPE, Zinsco, split-bus, fuse panels, etc. Owners of multifamily housing are facing extraordinary expenses over the coming years; seismic upgrades, fire sprinklers, electrical service upgrades, galvanized water pipes, cast iron sewers . . .

The numbers for these upgrades collectively don't pan out. Replacement of the entire structure becomes the only viable solution.

Sure the Rental Housing Committee and their hired guns will review the petitions for upward adjustment of rents for these outdated buildings. Make the $500,000 improvements and watch the brains of this industrial complex amortize the cost over the next 30 years. A typical 12-unit apartment building might see a POSSIBLE upward adjustment of $105.00/month per unit amortized over those 30-years--just to get your $500,000 back. Which, in 30 years will likely buy a loaf of bread.

Heard enough? Seen enough? Rent control, the city council, insurance companies and city planning/building in Mountain View is systematically destroying one property after another making them economically and physically obsolete.