75% of LA soft-story buildings are retrofitted but concrete ones lag at 6%

Los Angeles passed mandatory retrofit ordinances for both soft-story wood-frame buildings (Ordinance 183893) and non-ductile concrete buildings (Ordinance 184081). While 75% of the roughly 12,000 soft-story buildings have completed retrofits, only 6% of the nearly 1,200 non-ductile concrete buildings have finished construction. Non-ductile concrete buildings are the most dangerous type in earthquakes because they collapse suddenly and catastrophically rather than flexing, as seen in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The people living and working in these 1,100+ unretrofitted concrete buildings face a genuine life-safety risk every day. Many are office workers, retail employees, or residents who have no idea their building is on the city's non-ductile concrete list. The retrofit lags because concrete building retrofits cost dramatically more than wood-frame soft-story retrofits (often millions per building), the ordinance allows 10 years for completion, building owners face complex engineering challenges, and there is no robust financial assistance program to bridge the gap between mandate and affordability.