San Diego, CA
Grant money available for earthquake retrofitting for some San Diego homes
Thirty years ago, on Jan. 17, 1994, the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley, killing 57 people. It was felt in San Diego and as far away as Las Vegas and Ensenada, and caused an estimated $20 billion in damage.
California Earthquake Authority’s Chief Mitigation Officer Janiele Maffei said they learned a lot from that earthquake. “The Northridge earthquake absolutely drives a lot of what we do in terms of earthquake policy,” Maffei said.
The California Residential Mitigation Program established Earthquake Brace and Bolt or EBB to provide grants to help California homeowners pay to retrofit earthquake weaknesses in single-family houses.
“We’re going after — really — the most vulnerable type of seismic weakness in houses and we’re utilizing the techniques that we’ve seen since then, work,” Maffei said. “The retrofitted house really does work.”
Maffei said the EBB was created to go after one particular kind of earthquake weakness, in houses that were built with crawl spaces rather than on a slab.
“What happens in an earthquake? It’s like a giant has put a blanket under your house, and it’s kind of trying to pull that blanket out from under your house. Your house wants to stay where it is, and so that house is gonna go back and forth, “Maffei explained. ” All the weight of that house, if it’s not properly anchored, will just take it right off of the foundation. So if it’s 2 feet above the foundation, your house is going to come down that 2 feet. We see crawl spaces that are as tall as 4 to 6 feet tall. You can imagine that’s a lot of movement, a lot of damage.”
An EBB seismic retrofit means the foundation is bolted to the frame, and walls called “cripple walls” in the crawl space are braced with plywood. This helps prevent the house from sliding or even falling off its foundation during an earthquake.
The California Earthquake Authority estimates over 1.2 million houses have this vulnerability. “Open up that crawl space, take a peek in. You can have a contractor come out and take a look, but it is something that will really go a long way towards protecting your family and your finances,” Maffei said.
To qualify for the 2024 Earthquake Brace and Bolt, your home must be wood-framed, built before 1980 and with a raised foundation.
“Since 2014, Earthquake Brace and Bolt has provided grants for over 23,000 houses, so that’s a lot of data,” Maffei said. “We’ve got data on how much it costs in the areas. We’ve got data on how long it takes.”
Grant money is available up to $3,000 and should cover the majority of the retrofit, but a homeowner may have to pay-out-of-pocket depending on location, size of the house and other factors.
The Earthquake Brace and Bolt open registration runs through Feb. 21. To see if you qualify, go to earthquakebracebolt.com.
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County leaders are keeping their options open for a future county-backed tax hike as a citizens coalition pushes a November sales tax measure.
Officials in late April quietly extended a contract with consultants tasked with researching and poll-testing potential county revenue options for a Board of Supervisors subcommittee led by Chair Terra Lawson-Remer and Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe. The extension is for up to two years and the price tag remains up to $320,000.
Other county supervisors’ offices told Voice of San Diego they weren’t notified of the change – and one is now working on a policy proposal to force public updates on subcommittee-directed contracts.
County spokesperson Tammy Glenn said staff directed the contract extension “in consultation with the subcommittee” and based on prior board approval last September to create the Sustainable Fiscal Planning Subcommittee. The item allowed the subcommittee to hire and pay consultants up to $500,000 to explore multiple options to increase county revenues and taxes.
An initial January 2026 contract called for Chula Vista-based Ironwood Public Affairs and four subcontractors including a prominent local Democratic campaign consultant to survey county residents, prepare revenue estimates for potential tax hike options, conduct focus groups and outreach and submit a report by May 1.
On April 30, county staff amended the contract with Ironwood to “deliver any requested ballot measure language, report, and presentations no later than June 30, 2028.”
Five days later, a coalition that includes labor groups and advocates submitted signatures to the county registrar’s office for a proposed countywide sales tax hike projected to raise $360 million annually to fund healthcare, child care, solutions to the Tijuana River sewage crisis and public safety. The registrar’s office has since confirmed the measure qualified for the November ballot.
Lawson-Remer has rallied behind the sales tax proposal and argued that a “local revenue measure” could shield the county from Trump administration-backed cuts. The county has projected that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could cost the county $300 million annually.
In a statement, Lawson-Remer’s office noted that a board majority voted last September to create the subcommittee and hire a consultant.
“With the Trump Administration threatening healthcare, food assistance, behavioral health, and other core services — and federal decisions being announced, reversed, paused, challenged, and revived in real time — the county and Fiscal Subcommittee has a responsibility to plan for multiple scenarios, including federal cuts, state shortfalls, taxpayer savings, state advocacy, and whether any local funding option does or does not materialize,” Lawson-Remer’s office wrote.
In a separate statement, Montgomery Steppe also pointed to board approval of the subcommittee and its work “evaluating fiscal risks and options to help inform future Board decisions.”
A few months after the September vote to approve the subcommittee, the county hired Ironwood Public Affairs led by former county staffer Victor Aviña. Aviña’s company subcontracted with prominent Democratic campaign consultant Dan Rottenstreich’s company Amplify Campaigns, polling firm FM3 Research, Los Angeles revenue forecasting firm Economic & Planning Systems and Los Angeles-based law firm Kaufman Legal Group.
Glenn said the county has thus far paid Ironwood $96,000 for planning tasks that the initial contract said should be completed by early this year.
The county has yet to provide documents to Voice that the contractor submitted to the county about its work a month after a public-records request.
Spokespeople for the county’s three other elected supervisors said this week they weren’t notified about the changes to the contract.
Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond, the two Republicans on the board, have criticized the lack of transparency surrounding the subcommittees and consultants at least two of them have hired.
At an April board meeting, Desmond argued that subcommittees shouldn’t be allowed to spend county money or secure contracts without a review by the full board.
And Anderson has pushed for reforms to increase transparency for subcommittees that have met behind closed doors. The board on Thursday unanimously approved changes to make more of those meetings more public.
Anderson’s office said he is now working on a board proposal that, among other changes, would also require updates to the full board on work that outside consultants are doing for subcommittees. He expects to bring the proposal to the board in August.
“There’s no possibility of secrecy when a vendor/contractor reports to the entire board,” Anderson wrote in a statement.
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