An announcement is expected soon regarding the launch of a new soft-story retrofit program, called the Earthquake Soft Story (ESS) program. This program will provide grants to eligible California homeowners to help defray their retrofit costs. Stay tuned for more information about the ESS program.
In recent years, the Earthquake Brace + Bolt (EBB) retrofit program has provided earthquake retrofit grants to help more than 17,000 Californians pay for seismic retrofits of older homes that have a raised continuous perimeter concrete foundation, also referred to as a crawlspace. The EBB incentive program pays up to $3,000 in retrofit grants to the owners of eligible older homes in seismically high-risk ZIP Codes across the state.
Recently, EBB also has offered an additional Supplemental Grant (SG) earthquake retrofit program to income-eligible California homeowners. The SG program may cover the entire cost of an EBB seismic retrofit.