carport

These are apartment buildings with carports, garages or retail stores on the ground floor, with flimsy supports that can collapse in the side-to-side shaking of an earthquake.

“You can’t sell it like this,” he said matter of factly as he cleaned a table in his carport to make a staging area for his repairs.

“How are we accepting people living in our streets, living in alleys or living in carports for days, weeks and months,” he said.

In 2013, San Francisco ordered retrofits of “soft-story” apartments, which are vulnerable to collapse because their upper floors are held up by flimsy, skinny columns on top of carports or garages.

Beverly Hills passed a retrofit program in December 2018 targeted at soft-story buildings, typically low-rise apartments that can house dozens of people and have a flimsy first floor for carports.