Soft Story Retrofit Santa Monica 2026: Ordinance, Deadlines, Costs & Compliance Guide

**Quick Answer:** Santa Monica's soft-story retrofit ordinance requires wood-frame apartment buildings with tuck-under parking to complete seismic retrofitting by mandatory city deadlines. Retrofit costs range from $60,000 to $200,000+ depending on building size and complexity.

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# Soft Story Retrofit Santa Monica 2026: Ordinance, Deadlines, Costs & Compliance Guide

Santa Monica is California's most aggressive city on soft-story retrofit enforcement. Since the 1994 Northridge earthquake collapsed dozens of soft-story apartment buildings across the Los Angeles region — killing residents and displacing thousands — Santa Monica has systematically required property owners to engineer and retrofit vulnerable multi-family residential buildings. In 2026, Santa Monica's mandatory soft-story retrofit program continues enforcement with escalating penalties for non-compliant buildings and a final compliance deadline that property owners cannot defer.

This definitive guide covers everything Santa Monica apartment owners, property managers, HOA boards, and investors need to know about the soft-story retrofit ordinance in 2026: the engineering requirements, the deadline schedule, the penalty structure, the approved retrofit methods, realistic costs, and how AAA Engineering Design helps Santa Monica property owners achieve compliance efficiently.

**Call (949) 981-4448** for a free consultation on your Santa Monica soft-story retrofit project.

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A soft-story building is a multi-family residential structure where one floor — almost always the ground floor — has significantly less lateral stiffness and strength than the floors above it. This structural weakness is created when the ground floor has:

During an earthquake, the upper floors of a soft-story building behave like a heavy weight sitting on a weak, flexible story below. The ground story absorbs disproportionate lateral displacement — a phenomenon called **story drift** — and frequently collapses completely, pancaking the upper stories down to grade level.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake collapsed 16 apartment buildings in the Northridge-Reseda area alone, most of them soft-story construction from the 1960s and 1970s. In the Santa Monica area, soft-story building collapses caused deaths, injuries, and the displacement of thousands of renters. Santa Monica's ordinance is a direct legislative response to this documented life-safety hazard.

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Santa Monica's mandatory seismic retrofit program for soft-story buildings is codified in Santa Monica Municipal Code Chapter 8.72 — the **Mandatory Seismic Retrofit Ordinance for Wood-Frame Multi-Unit Residential Buildings**.

The Santa Monica ordinance covers wood-frame residential buildings that meet all of the following criteria:

Buildings constructed after 1978 were built under the post-Northridge-era California Building Code and generally do not qualify as soft-story hazards requiring mandatory retrofit, though individual properties may warrant voluntary seismic evaluation.

The Santa Monica ordinance does not apply to:

Santa Monica requires soft-story retrofits to meet the engineering standard specified in the **Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) Appendix Chapter A4** — the prescriptive design standard adopted across Los Angeles County for wood-frame soft-story retrofits. This standard allows engineers to use either:

For Santa Monica buildings with irregular configurations, asymmetric plans, or non-standard stories, the engineered design approach is almost always required. A California-licensed PE must prepare and stamp all retrofit documents.

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Santa Monica's compliance program operates on a phased deadline system. Property owners who received compliance orders from the City of Santa Monica are subject to the following timeline:

Within **12 months** of receiving the City's compliance order, property owners must:

Within **36 months** of the compliance order:

Within **60 months** (5 years) of the compliance order:

Buildings that received Santa Monica compliance orders in 2021-2022 now face construction completion deadlines in 2026-2027. Buildings ordered earlier may already be past their final deadlines. If you own a Santa Monica soft-story building and have not yet initiated the retrofit process, you are almost certainly in violation of the ordinance timeline.

Santa Monica enforces its soft-story retrofit ordinance through:

**Administrative Citations**: Property owners who miss compliance deadlines face administrative citations of **$250 to $500 per violation per day**. For a building with 10 units, daily citations compound quickly into tens of thousands of dollars annually.

**Relocation Assistance Liability**: If the City determines the building poses an imminent seismic hazard, it can order evacuation. The property owner is responsible for relocation assistance payments to displaced tenants — currently **$7,459 to $22,378 per tenant household** in Santa Monica under the City's Tenant Assistance Program.

**Real Estate Transaction Restrictions**: Non-compliant soft-story buildings in Santa Monica are disclosed in City records and can complicate or block real estate sales. Buyers and their lenders increasingly require retrofit compliance as a condition of close.

**Title Encumbrances**: The City records notices of non-compliance against property titles, affecting financing and insurance.

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A soft-story retrofit strengthens the structurally deficient ground floor to provide lateral resistance comparable to the upper stories. Santa Monica engineers use three primary retrofit methods:

The most common and economical retrofit for smaller Santa Monica soft-story buildings. Engineers design new structural plywood shear walls within the open-sided ground floor parking or carport area. The plywood panels are nailed to a wood frame (new posts and beams) and connected to the foundation with holdown anchors.

**How It Works**: The shear walls resist horizontal earthquake forces that would otherwise cause the ground floor to rack (lean) and collapse. The walls are sized and located by the engineer to provide the required stiffness and strength at the ground story level.

**Advantages**: Lower cost, compatible with prescriptive A4 design approach, faster construction timeline (2-4 weeks typical), minimal impact on upper-story living units.

**Limitations**: Reduces available parking spaces when walls are placed within parking bays. Cannot always achieve the required stiffness in very large or irregular buildings. Not suitable for buildings with very high ground-story heights (above 12 feet).

**Typical Cost**: $60,000 - $120,000 for engineering and construction combined on a 10-20 unit Santa Monica building.

The premium retrofit solution for Santa Monica soft-story buildings where preserving maximum parking space is a priority, or where the building configuration requires greater lateral stiffness than plywood shear walls provide.

**How It Works**: Steel moment frames are welded or bolted steel column-and-beam assemblies designed to resist lateral earthquake forces through bending of the steel members — not through solid wall panels. The frames are installed at selected bays of the ground floor parking area, providing lateral resistance while leaving the adjacent bays open for parking.

**Advantages**: Minimizes loss of parking spaces (critical for Santa Monica buildings where parking is a premium). Provides very high lateral stiffness. Compatible with very large or tall ground stories. Aesthetically clean — the visible steel frame is often more acceptable to tenants and design-conscious owners than solid shear walls.

**Limitations**: Significantly higher cost. Longer design and fabrication timeline. Requires engineered design (cannot use prescriptive A4 approach). Structural connections to existing concrete foundations require careful engineering to transfer moment frame forces.

**Typical Cost**: $120,000 - $200,000+ for engineering and construction combined, depending on number of frames required and building size.

Many Santa Monica soft-story buildings benefit from a hybrid approach: steel moment frames at critical locations (typically the open-sided carport face with the highest exposure) combined with plywood shear walls at interior locations where some parking reduction is acceptable.

**How It Works**: The engineer analyzes the building's complete lateral load path and allocates lateral resistance between steel frames and plywood walls to optimize the balance between cost, parking preservation, and seismic performance.

**Advantages**: More cost-effective than all-steel solution while preserving more parking than all-plywood solution. Can be tailored precisely to each building's configuration and owner priorities.

**Typical Cost**: $90,000 - $160,000 depending on the proportion of steel to plywood and building size.

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A California-licensed PE visits the Santa Monica property to document the existing structural system: foundation type, cripple wall height, existing lateral bracing elements, and ground story geometry. The engineer prepares a Seismic Evaluation Report identifying the soft-story deficiency and recommending the retrofit approach.

The property owner submits the engineer's assessment to Santa Monica Building and Safety for Tier Determination. The City classifies the building into one of three tiers based on the estimated level of seismic hazard, which affects the compliance deadline schedule.

The PE-stamped structural package is submitted to the City of Santa Monica Building and Safety Division. Santa Monica Building and Safety typically takes **4-8 weeks** to complete plan check for soft-story retrofit submittals. AAA Engineering Design responds to plan check corrections within 48 hours to maintain permit timelines.

The engineer performs field observations at critical milestones to verify compliance with the design.

Santa Monica Building and Safety inspectors verify the completed retrofit work. The engineer provides a completion letter documenting that all retrofit elements meet the design specifications. The permit is finaled and the compliance record updated.

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| Service | Cost | |---------|------| | Seismic evaluation report | $3,500 - $6,000 | | Prescriptive retrofit design (plywood) | $6,000 - $12,000 | | Engineered retrofit design (steel frames) | $12,000 - $25,000 | | Hybrid design | $10,000 - $18,000 | | Plan check coordination and corrections | Included | | Construction observation | $2,500 - $5,000 |

| Retrofit Method | Construction Cost (10-20 unit building) | |----------------|----------------------------------------| | Plywood shear walls | $45,000 - $100,000 | | Steel moment frames (4-6 frames) | $90,000 - $160,000 | | Hybrid approach | $70,000 - $130,000 | | Foundation anchor bolt additions | $8,000 - $15,000 | | Permit fees | $3,500 - $8,000 |

**Total Project Cost Range**: $60,000 (small building, plywood) to $200,000+ (large building, steel frames)

Santa Monica property owners have several financing pathways for soft-story retrofit:

**Capital Improvement Rent Increases**: Santa Monica Rent Control allows property owners to petition for rent increases to offset capital improvement costs, including seismic retrofits. This does not require tenant consent and is processed through the Santa Monica Rent Control Board.

**Commercial Property Financing**: Many lenders offer commercial real estate loans or lines of credit for retrofit projects, secured by the property.

**California Earthquake Authority (CEA) Brace + Bolt**: While the CEA's residential program primarily covers single-family homes, some small multi-family properties may qualify for assistance.

**SBA Disaster Mitigation Loans**: Available for qualifying retrofit projects in designated seismic hazard areas.

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Santa Monica has among California's strongest tenant protections. Soft-story retrofit construction raises several tenant relations considerations:

Property owners must provide tenants with reasonable notice (typically 24 hours) before accessing units or common areas for retrofit-related work. Retrofit construction in parking areas does not require unit access in most cases.

If retrofit construction requires temporary displacement of tenants (unusual for parking-area retrofits), Santa Monica's tenant relocation assistance ordinance applies. Proactive communication with tenants about the construction timeline prevents disputes.

Concrete drilling for foundation anchors and steel framing installation create temporary construction noise. Santa Monica's noise ordinance limits construction hours to 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM Monday through Friday and 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Saturday. Experienced contractors sequence the work to minimize tenant disruption within these hours.

If the property owner plans to petition for a rent increase to offset retrofit costs, tenants must receive formal notice through the Santa Monica Rent Control process before any increase takes effect.

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Santa Monica's soft-story building inventory has several characteristics that make its retrofit program more urgent than equivalent programs in less seismically exposed cities:

**Proximity to Active Faults**: Santa Monica sits directly adjacent to the Santa Monica Fault, which runs east-west through the community. The USGS has identified the Santa Monica Fault as capable of generating a magnitude 7.1 or greater earthquake. Ground shaking at Santa Monica from a rupture of this fault would be among the most severe in the Los Angeles region.

**High Density of Vulnerable Buildings**: Santa Monica's Westside location, proximity to the beach, and rental market density created a large stock of 1960s-1970s apartment buildings — precisely the era when soft-story tuck-under construction was the dominant multi-family building type.

**High Occupancy**: Santa Monica's apartment buildings are densely occupied. The life-safety consequences of soft-story collapse in Santa Monica's building stock are greater than in less densely populated areas.

**High Property Values**: With median apartment values among the highest in California, the financial protection of a $150,000 retrofit against the risk of a $3,000,000+ building loss is economically compelling independent of the legal compliance requirement.

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AAA Engineering Design provides California PE-licensed seismic retrofitting engineering with deep expertise in Santa Monica's soft-story ordinance compliance process.

**Proven Santa Monica Experience**: Our engineers know the Santa Monica Building and Safety Division's plan check process for soft-story retrofits, the Tier Determination application requirements, and the A4 prescriptive and engineered design standards that Santa Monica accepts.

**Full-Service Engineering**: We handle the complete engineering scope — seismic assessment, Tier Determination support, retrofit design (plywood, steel, or hybrid), complete construction documents, plan check coordination, and construction observation. One firm, one point of contact, from assessment through permit finaling.

**Steel Moment Frame Expertise**: Many Santa Monica property owners want to preserve parking spaces. Our engineers are experienced with steel moment frame design for soft-story retrofits — providing lateral resistance with minimal parking reduction.

**Responsive Plan Check Support**: Our turnaround on Santa Monica plan check corrections is 48 hours. We do not create delays in your compliance timeline.

**20+ Years, 500+ Projects**: Our structural engineering portfolio includes soft-story retrofits, seismic assessments, and residential structural engineering projects across Los Angeles County, Orange County, and the greater Southern California region.

**Free Consultation**: Call **(949) 981-4448** to discuss your Santa Monica soft-story property. We assess your current compliance status, explain the retrofit options, and provide a fee proposal within 48 hours.

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Your building requires retrofit if it is wood-frame construction, has five or more units, was built before 1978, and has a ground floor with tuck-under parking, open-sided carports, or extensive ground-floor openings creating a soft story. Check with Santa Monica Building and Safety or contact AAA Engineering Design at (949) 981-4448 for a free assessment.

Non-compliance triggers administrative citations of $250-$500 per day per violation. The City may also record title encumbrances against your property and, in severe cases, order building evacuation with mandatory tenant relocation assistance payments.

No. Property owners have a legal right to access common areas (parking, carports, crawl spaces) for code-required retrofit work with proper notice. If tenants interfere with mandatory seismic retrofit work, the property owner can seek legal remedies through Santa Monica's Housing Authority.

Yes. Santa Monica's Rent Control ordinance allows capital improvement rent increases for seismic retrofit costs. Property owners petition the Santa Monica Rent Control Board with documentation of actual retrofit costs. Approved increases are typically passed through over a number of months.

From initial assessment to final permit sign-off, most Santa Monica soft-story retrofits take 9-18 months. Assessment and engineering: 3-4 months. City plan check: 1-2 months. Construction: 2-6 months. Final inspection: 2-4 weeks.

Yes. Steel moment frames cost approximately 50-80% more than plywood shear walls for equivalent lateral resistance. The premium is justified when preserving parking spaces has economic value — in Santa Monica, where parking is scarce and required parking affects property value and tenant retention, steel frames often deliver the better total economic outcome.

Plywood shear wall retrofits require placing solid walls within some parking bays, reducing available spaces. Steel moment frame retrofits preserve more parking — typically only the bays with the frame columns are affected, and vehicles can still park adjacent to the columns in most configurations. Our engineers design the retrofit to minimize parking loss while achieving the required seismic performance.

Yes. Santa Monica requires compliance with the LADBS Appendix Chapter A4 prescriptive standard or an equivalent engineered design prepared by a California-licensed PE. Generic seismic assessments without A4-compliant retrofit designs are not accepted by Santa Monica Building and Safety for permit issuance.

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Santa Monica's soft-story retrofit program operates on fixed statutory deadlines. The City does not grant extensions except in documented hardship cases meeting strict criteria. Property owners who defer action past their compliance deadline face escalating penalties, title encumbrances, and — most critically — the continued exposure of tenants and the building to preventable earthquake risk.

AAA Engineering Design is ready to begin your Santa Monica soft-story assessment immediately. We provide the engineering expertise, the ordinance knowledge, and the responsive service that Santa Monica property owners need to achieve compliance on schedule.

**Call (949) 981-4448** today. Free consultation. 48-hour fee proposal. PE-stamped documents accepted by Santa Monica Building and Safety.

Contact AAA Engineering Design | Seismic Retrofitting Services | Structural Inspection

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