Damage to privately owned buildings is one of the most significant risks from a major earthquake. To build new buildings better and to prepare our existing homes, offices, shops and other structures for an earthquake, we need to reform our building code to require higher standards for building safety and post-earthquake reoccupancy. The Office of Resilience and Capital Planning is working with a coalition of City officials, design professionals and community members to amend the San Francisco Building Code to require higher standards for new buildings, considering not only basic safety, but also post-disaster usage and occupancy.

Building codes exist to set the minimum standard for buildings in a city. San Francisco has a long history of progressively amending the code to respond to local needs and pressing challenges.

Developing sound policies that address both earthquake risk and the building code’s real-life impact on San Franciscans requires a combination of expert-led technical development and community input. Tenant displacement, parking issues and financing options, in addition to earthquake damage risk reduction, were all considered when previous code changes were adopted. New code advancements will follow this tradition.

More information on the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS), which guides San Francisco’s work in the area of seismic safety, can be found here.

Soft story buildings, which house roughly 180,000 San Franciscans, make up a significant portion of our City’s rent-controlled housing stock, and contain many beloved, neighborhood-serving businesses. In 2013, Mayor Lee and the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved legislation requiring the retrofit of approximately 5,000 of soft story buildings. Permit and retrofit deadlines for buildings with five or more residential units range from 2017 to 2020 depending on building type.

More information on the Mandatory Soft Story Program is available here.   

More information on the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS), which guides San Francisco’s work in the area of seismic safety, can be found here.

Today’s challenges will only worsen with tomorrow’s disruptions. We must work now to ensure housing for all San Franciscans before and after a disaster. We will work to address our city’s housing and homeless crises through innovative policies, reimagining and bold action to build a stronger city for today and tomorrow.

The Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) is leading an initiative to better prepare San Francisco for the next recession by developing the first-ever municipal Economic Resiliency and Recovery Plan. They have modeled the effects of different recession scenarios and are developing recommendations to prepare for and respond to a recession given that once a recession begins, there is a limited window of six to nine months to implement effective economic countermeasures. San Francisco will develop an economic resilience plan to act to counter recessionary trends before that window expires. 

The best outcome for residents after a disaster is to remain in or as close to their homes as possible. Residential units will likely be damaged, so this may take the form of mobile housing units on the site of the homes or living in a relatively safe, though damaged, unit. If remaining in one’s home or on the site of one’s homes is not possible, the next best option is live temporarily in a new location within the neighborhood. This minimizes disruption to the residents’ lives as their home is repaired. 

To help residents stay in San Francisco after a major disaster, the City will create a strategy to address the range of housing needs post-disaster. Special attention will be paid to the multifamily structures that house approximately 70 percent of San Franciscans. This strategy will most likely be developed through the Housing Recovery Support Function of the Disaster Recovery Framework, in coordination with Emergency Support Function #6 – Mass Care, Housing, and Human Services Annex. If it is not possible for residents to remain in their homes or their neighborhoods, the strategy would strive to keep them in the city at shelter and housing sites.

San Francisco is considering approaches for the development of a Disaster Recovery Framework to guide pre- and post-event recovery activities. Developing and maintaining a Disaster Recovery Framework is important to help ensure that San Francisco can launch an effective recovery as soon as possible following a major disaster, which will help expedite restoration of services, encourage residents and businesses to stay, and establish confidence in local decision-making. Since disasters often produce the need to rebuild in affected areas, building agreement on the goals of recovery in advance will help ensure that rebuilding can happen efficiently, sustainably, and equitably in line with community values. The Framework will outline the organizational structure, administration, and coordination steps following a disaster event. The Framework will include descriptions of the roles and responsibilities of City departments, authorizing bodies, state and federal agencies, as well as community stakeholders in supporting recovery. Sections on Recovery Support Functions (RSFs) define the core recovery goals and actions of City agencies and supporting organizations on topics such as economic recovery, health and social services, housing, and infrastructure systems.

Credit: Caltrans Eastern Span Bay Bridge replacement

The City Administrator’s Office initiated the Lifelines Council in 2009 with the goals improving coordination among lifeline providers, better understanding their interdependencies, sharing information and better coordinating restoration and recovery from a major disaster. The Lifelines Council is made up of both private and public utility providers, first responders and senior public sector officials, who together work to ensure that our City and the region can recover quickly from unexpected disruptions. The Office of Resilience and Capital Planning will staff the Council as it works towards it goals.

The major effort underway through the Lifelines Council is the Restoration Timelines Project. This study will assess and improve the restoration performance of lifelines following a major earthquake with the goal of helping the City and its people more quickly recover from a major earthquake. It will identify projects, policies, and actions needed to close the gap between current and target restoration timelines. 

More information about the Lifelines Council is available here. 

The Hazards and Climate Resilience Plan is a multi-department effort that also serves as the 2019 Hazard Mitigation Plan update and California SB 379 compliant Safety Element update. This plan will include a robust assessment of how climate change is impacting the extent, frequency, and intensity of hazard events like floods and droughts while also continuing a robust assessment of non-climate hazards, such as earthquakes. It will assess the vulnerability of San Francisco’s populations, resources, and infrastructure to these hazards and provide a set of resilience goals, objectives, and strategies. Integrating climate adaptation with traditional hazard mitigation planning, the plan will prioritize approaches that address multiple hazards and leverage co-benefits. This will also fulfill San Francisco’s commitment to the global C40 Deadline 2020 initiative to demonstrate adaptation to climate hazards.

San Francisco’s most recently approved Hazard Mitigation Plan is available in full-text here.

In 2016, the City released its Sea Level Rise (SLR) Action Plan. Building on significant and collaborative prior work, it defines an overarching vision, while putting forth key objectives for SLR planning in San Francisco. It summarizes current climate science, reviews relevant policies and regulations, and estimates the cost of inaction. It also identifies data gaps and establishes a framework for further assessment, adaptation planning and implementation. Among other key steps, the Planning Department will be completing a SLR Vulnerability and Consequences Assessment that will inform adaptation strategy development going forward.

San Francisco’s Sea Level Rise Action Plan is available in full-text here.  

ConnectSF is an interagency collaborative process to build an effective, equitable, and sustainable transportation system for our future. As a first phase, this effort has been developing a 50-year vision of San Francisco’s transportation future that will represent our priorities, goals, and aspirations as a city within the larger Bay Area. This vision will help ensure that land use, transportation and economic development in San Francisco are coordinated, consider long-range implications, and inform regional planning efforts on behalf of San Francisco. The ConnectSF Vision Phase is nearly complete and the resulting guiding framework will be used to update several transportation plans and projects, such as the San Francisco Transportation Plan, Transit Corridors Study, Streets and Freeway Study, and Transportation Element Update. ConnectSF is led by the Mayor’s Office of Transportation Policy, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, SF Planning, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

More information on ConnectSF is available here.