Achieve Two Aims with One Effort

you can Achieve two aims with one effort

1)Seismic upgrade of a soft story building

The phrase “Seismic upgrade of a soft story building” refers to the process of strengthening a building that has a soft-story design to improve its resistance to earthquake forces.

Seismic upgrade: This involves retrofitting or reinforcing a building to enhance its ability to withstand seismic activity. This can include adding braces, shear walls or other structural elements that help stabilize the building during an earthquake.

soft story building: A soft-story building typically has one or more floors that are significantly less rigid than the others, often due to large openings like garages or storefronts on the ground floor. This design can make the building more vulnerable during an earthquake because the weaker story can collapse or experience excessive movement.

Upgrading soft-story buildings is crucial in earthquake prone areas to ensure safety, protect occupants, and reduce damage to property. Many cities have regulations or incentives for these upgrades to mitigates risks.

If you have more specific aspects you want to delve into, feel free to ask! 

2) Add more units to existing multi-family residential by conversion of existing parking to ADUs

it suggests a plan to increase the number of housing units in a multi-family residential building by converting existing parking spaces into Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)

Multi-Family Residential: This refers to buildings designed to house multiple families, like apartment complexes or condominiums.

Add more units: This means increasing the total number of housing units available in the building.

Conversion of existing parking: This indicates that the plan involves taking spaces that are currently used for parking vehicles and transforming them for another purpose.

ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units): These are smaller, self-contained living units that can be added to an existing property. They often include a kitchen, bathroom, and living space, and can serve as rental units, guest quarters, or homes for family members.

In summary, this outlines a strategy for addressing housing needs by repurposing parking spaces into additional living units, which could help alleviate housing shortages or provide more options in urban areas.

Property owners can now convert portions of existing structures that are not used as livable space — such as storage rooms, garages, carports, mechanical rooms, attics, or basements — into ADUs. At least one ADU can be created through this method and up to 25% of the existing unit count.

for example if the exiting multi family building has 60 units we can convert garage to 15 new ADUs and the total would be 75 units.