1. Disaster Preparedness
A. Only 8% of tenants in 2009 Berkeley Rent Board tenant survey had any direct experience with local disaster preparedness efforts.
B. Large apartment buildings (16+ units) have an on-site manager & offer big “bang” for the disaster prep “buck” (large #s of residents in 1 place).
i. Free Training Pilot Program- to train property managers & tenants in large apartment buildings with special 2-hour disaster prep course focused on multi-unit issues.
ii. Free Emergency Caches Pilot Program- for selected 16+unit buildings, with all of the same Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training requirements as standard emergency caches.
2. Seismic Safety
A. Soft Story Phase 2 finally passed 2013, but it only covers identified soft story buildings of 5+ units. Not only are smaller multi-unit buildings excluded, so are any other soft story buildings that appeared visually solid during the original visual surveys of 1990s & early 2000s.
i. Monitor enforcement and completion rates of Soft Story Phase Two, the mandatory retrofit law, to make sure that scofflaws endangering tenants’ life & limb do not continue to gamble with life and death and risk Berkeley’s housing stock. This also ensures fairness to conscientious landlords who retrofitted their weak buildings before they were required to do so by the passage of Phase Two.
ii. Require all multi-unit Soft Weak Open Front (SWOF, aka “Soft Story”) buildings to submit engineering reports proving they’re structurally sound. San Francisco requires all buildings of a certain age and construction to do this in their new Soft Story law.
iii. Require automatic gas shut-off valves for all renovations of apartment buildings, perhaps triggered by building permits over over $50,000 per permit. Currently, multifamily properties are exempt from this requirement, which only applies to single family homes in California state law.