Seven years into Los Angeles’ landmark earthquake safety campaign, more than 8,000 seismically vulnerable buildings have been retrofitted across the city at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion, a new analysis shows.

The improvements mark the biggest advance in seismic upgrades in decades but still leave thousands of buildings vulnerable to damage or even collapse in a catastrophic temblor.

The regulations, a legacy of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s push for the nation’s most sweeping earthquake safety legislation, require a total of nearly 14,000 buildings to be retrofitted. The rules came after years of stalled efforts to improve the resilience of buildings despite growing evidence of earthquake threats.

The rules target apartments and other structures with soft, flimsy floors first as well as larger concrete-frame buildings of the type that sustained major damage during the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge quakes.

Many of the completed retrofits have come in wood-frame, soft-story apartment buildings, where upgrades are considerably cheaper than those in brittle concrete-frame buildings. Under the city’s rules, property owners pay for the structural improvements, but landlords can pass on a portion of the costs to tenants.

Cyclists ride past the remains of a collapsed Kaiser Permanente clinic and office building in Granada Hills after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The structure was a vulnerable concrete building.

(Jonathan Alcorn/Los Angeles Times)

Earthquake experts have been pushing communities across California to focus on strengthening key infrastructure to better withstand big quakes, including utilities, water systems and buildings. Though LA has targeted thousands of structures, it still has not dealt with another type of vulnerable construction: steel-frame buildings, of which 25 were significantly damaged in the Northridge earthquake. That includes the Automobile Club of Southern California building in Santa Clarita, which came very close to collapsing.

“Steel-frame buildings have the potential to fracture” a key part of their skeleton, said Ryan Kersting, who chairs the policy committee for the Structural Engineers Assn. of California. “And once you start to have that fracture, you are concerned with instability and possible collapse of those buildings.”

It would be important to conduct a case-by-case analysis to understand which buildings are at the highest risk of collapse, even at lower shaking intensities, Kersting said. A US Geological Survey simulation released in 2008 of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California said it’s plausible that five high-rise steel buildings holding 5,000 people could collapse.

“We should be more informed about the risks that we have of our buildings,” Kersting said.

Nonetheless, LA and a handful of other cities have come a long way in the last few years. Cities such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Beverly Hills and Pasadena now have laws requiring soft-story buildings to be retrofitted. In Northern California, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland have such laws on the books as well.

“That’s really big, and really huge, with really big benefits,” seismologist Lucy Jones said. “The most satisfying thing has been the really big shift about softer story [buildings] and all that’s been able to be done about that.”

The report shows the benefits of LA’s law requiring soft-story buildings, also known as dingbats, to be retrofitted. A telltale sign of these structures are those with housing units above carports propped up by flimsy poles, which are vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake.

Kehl Tonga of Cal-Quake Construction installs a steel support to strengthen a quake-vulnerable soft-story apartment building in Hollywood.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, about 200 soft-story buildings collapsed, including one apartment building in which 16 people died.

The report’s release comes 14 years after the first ShakeOut, a giant earthquake drill that asks residents to simulate what they would do in a temblor.

Of the 12,604 soft-story buildings identified by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, 8,228 have been retrofitted, or 65%. Retrofit building permits also have been issued for an additional 2,068 buildings.

The skinny, flimsy columns supporting this El Centro apartment building left the structure unstable after a 2010 earthquake

(Fred Turner/California Seismic Safety Commission)

The study by structural engineer Keith Porter, an expert on California seismic safety issues, estimated that the retrofit of 8,100 soft-story apartment buildings in Los Angeles — that was the total when the analysis was conducted — strengthened 117,000 housing units. Officials estimate that the typical retrofit of a soft-story building in LA costs $80,000 to $160,000.

Porter estimated that property owners in LA have spent $1.3 billion so far on these retrofits.

But the benefits are already immense. Porter calculated that the retrofits will reduce future financial losses by $41 billion and avert 1,500 deaths and 27,000 nonfatal injuries and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. The retrofits also are expected to prevent 5,000 housing units from collapsing and an additional 60,000 from being significantly damaged.

Calling it “a very cost-effective investment,” Porter calculated that every dollar invested in a retrofit will save $32 had the property owner not paid for seismic upgrades.

“These estimates omit important but hard-to-quantify benefits such as protecting mementos, pets, peace of mind, community and culture,” Porter wrote. “They ignore debris disposal, the energy embodied in repairing or replacing the buildings, and the increase in housing costs that accompany reduced housing supply.

“And this analysis is silent on the potential for displaced residents to become homeless, with attendant mental and physical health impacts, demands on public services and other harms,” he added.

“Retrofitting these buildings today will keep many tenants in their homes,” Porter said. “The retrofits will avoid thousands of injuries that would otherwise require emergency medical care, freeing up medical resources when they are in sudden, severe demand. The avoided losses benefit everyone.”

LA’s seismic retrofit law was passed after a Times analysis published in 2013 found that more than 1,000 old concrete buildings may be at risk of collapse in a major earthquake. The city had long known about the risk but had done little about it in the years after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Early in his term in January 2014, Garcetti announced a partnership with Jones to develop recommendations on addressing earthquake vulnerability issues. Jones, previously a scientist with the US Geological Survey, was a key figure behind ShakeOut, the name for both the giant earthquake drill and the release of a report in 2008 showing the effect of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault. In that scenario, scientists estimated a quake could cause 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage and other losses.

By the end of 2014, Garcetti proposed a sweeping set of seismic safety rules that won the unanimous support of the City Council the following year.

Vehicles crushed when a soft-story apartment building collapsed during the Northridge earthquake in 1994.

(Roland Otero/Los Angeles Times)

But the work is not done. Improvements on the reliability of the electrical grid and fuel pipelines has been uneven, Jones said, and she remains concerned about the stability of Southern California’s water supply.

LA has made slow progress on getting brittle concrete buildings retrofitted. City data show that only two of LA’s 1,337 brittle concrete buildings have received certificates of compliance showing they meet the standards of the retrofit law.

Owners of concrete buildings were given much longer to get them retrofitted — 25 years, compared with the seven years that owners of soft-story buildings had to upgrade.

Some owners of soft-story buildings began receiving orders to retrofit in 2016, meaning they still have some time before the seven-year deadline passes. Other owners started getting orders in 2017.

Concrete buildings can be especially deadly because they are so massive. The collapse of two concrete buildings in a quake in New Zealand in 2011 resulted in 133 deaths.

Jones remains particularly concerned about old brick buildings. A Times analysis in 2018 found that there were as many as 640 unreinforced masonry buildings in more than a dozen Inland Empire cities, including Riverside, Pomona and San Bernardino, that have been marked as dangerous but remained unretrofitted despite decades of warnings.

Little has been done to get those buildings retrofitted, despite the fact that the San Andreas fault runs through the region. By contrast, LA ordered that such structures be retrofitted or demolished decades ago.

In a statement, Garcetti said he hoped LA could be a model.

“While there’s still work to be done, we’ve positioned the city to continue expanding critical building requirements and serving as a model for cities around the world of what it looks like to be earthquake-ready,” he said.

In the 2011 New Zealand earthquake, more than 40 people died when brick and stone buildings collapsed. Most were not inside the buildings, but were killed by falling debris while on the sidewalk or in a vehicle on an adjacent road.

“It’s frustrating because we know those are ones that are going to kill people,” Jones said. “It requires thinking beyond the short term and believing in community and communal investments.”

Bricks from collapsed buildings fill a street in Christchurch, New Zealand, after an earthquake in 2011. More than 40 people died from the collapse of brick structures during the temblor.

(Martin Hunter/Getty Images)

Jones is also concerned about California’s minimum building standards, which still allow the construction of new buildings that can be so severely damaged in a major earthquake that they must be torn down. Quake safety advocates have promoted a new building standard that would have structures built stronger in the first place, so they can be repaired and reoccupied relatively quickly after a major temblor.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 vetoed a bill intended to strengthen the minimum construction requirements. The proposed law would have established a committee to evaluate whether a tougher building standard should be adopted and offer input on whether the new rule should be mandatory.

Porter has previously estimated that strengthening California’s minimum building standards would increase construction costs by 1% to 2%.

“Think of how many buildings have been built in downtown Los Angeles in the last 15 years. There’s a lot of them, and they are built to be a total financial loss” if built to the existing minimum construction standard, Jones said. “What’s going to happen to the economy of Southern California if we can’t use the buildings in downtown LA?”

The post L.A.’s $1-billion earthquake milestone: 8,000 constructing upgrades appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

october 11, 2022Updated: Oct. 13, 2022 6:32pm

Opened in 1927, the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite is one of the “great lodges” of the US National Parks system. Many guests have reported strange happenings on the hotel’s sixth floor. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Service/MCT)

Handout, HO/MCT

The famous 95-year-old Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park will be closed for 8 weeks at the beginning of 2023 for seismic upgrades, according to the park.

The $31.6 million project — funded by the Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 — consists of a major seismic upgrade throughout the hotel as well as a kitchen renovation, according to a Yosemite National Park press release. Kitchen project work is currently underway and the seismic safety upgrade will begin near the end of the year.

“The Ahwahnee is a crown jewel of national park lodges” said Cicely Muldoon, Yosemite National Park superintendent. “This much-needed work will ensure the Ahwahnee is seismically safe for present and future generations of Yosemite visitors.”

The seismic support upgrade will focus on bracing the chimneys and support walls, replacing window frames and dining room glass in high use visitor areas, the release added. The current central cooling system will also be updated along with improvements to the fireplace.

The Ahwahnee — which opened in 1927, contains 97 guest rooms and 24 cottages — will be closed for reservations from Jan. 2 till March 2 and will not be accepting reservations during that time due to the construction.

Famous visitors to the historic park have included presidents and international dignitaries such as John F. Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II.

Joel Umanzor (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: joel.umanzor@sfchronicle.com

Joel Umanzor joined The San Francisco Chronicle as a breaking news reporter in 2022. A 2021-2023 Hearst Fellow, he was previously a breaking news reporter on The Houston Chronicle’s Metro desk.

Originally from Richmond, Calif., Umanzor graduated from San Francisco State University in 2021. When not in the newsroom or chasing down a source, he can be found painting, listening to hip-hop or watching sports.

The post Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Resort will shut for 2 months to endure $31.6 million in seismic upgrades appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Seven years into Los Angeles’ landmark earthquake safety campaign, more than 8,000 seismically vulnerable buildings have been retrofitted across the city at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion, a new analysis shows.

The improvements mark the biggest advance in seismic upgrades in decades but still leave thousands of buildings vulnerable to damage or even collapse in a catastrophic temblor.

The regulations, a legacy of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s push for the nation’s most sweeping earthquake safety legislation, require a total of nearly 14,000 buildings to be retrofitted. The rules came after years of stalled efforts to improve the resilience of buildings despite growing evidence of earthquake threats.

The rules target apartments and other structures with soft, flimsy floors first as well as larger concrete-frame buildings of the type that sustained major damage during the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge quakes.

Many of the completed retrofits have come in wood-frame, soft-story apartment buildings, where upgrades are considerably cheaper than those in brittle concrete-frame buildings. Under the city’s rules, property owners pay for the structural improvements, but landlords can pass on a portion of the costs to tenants.

Cyclists ride past the remains of a collapsed Kaiser Permanente clinic and office building in Granada Hills after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The structure was a vulnerable concrete building.

(Jonathan Alcorn/Los Angeles Times)

Earthquake experts have been pushing communities across California to focus on strengthening key infrastructure to better withstand big quakes, including utilities, water systems and buildings. Though LA has targeted thousands of structures, it still has not dealt with another type of vulnerable construction: steel-frame buildings, of which 25 were significantly damaged in the Northridge earthquake. That includes the Automobile Club of Southern California building in Santa Clarita, which came very close to collapsing.

“Steel-frame buildings have the potential to fracture” a key part of their skeleton, said Ryan Kersting, who chairs the policy committee for the Structural Engineers Assn. of California. “And once you start to have that fracture, you are concerned with instability and possible collapse of those buildings.”

It would be important to conduct a case-by-case analysis to understand which buildings are at the highest risk of collapse, even at lower shaking intensities, Kersting said. A US Geological Survey simulation released in 2008 of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California said it’s plausible that five high-rise steel buildings holding 5,000 people could collapse.

“We should be more informed about the risks that we have of our buildings,” Kersting said.

Nonetheless, LA and a handful of other cities have come a long way in the last few years. Cities such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Beverly Hills and Pasadena now have laws requiring soft-story buildings to be retrofitted. In Northern California, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland have such laws on the books as well.

“That’s really big, and really huge, with really big benefits,” seismologist Lucy Jones said. “The most satisfying thing has been the really big shift about softer story [buildings] and all that’s been able to be done about that.”

The report shows the benefits of LA’s law requiring soft-story buildings, also known as dingbats, to be retrofitted. A telltale sign of these structures are those with housing units above carports propped up by flimsy poles, which are vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake.

Kehl Tonga of Cal-Quake Construction installs a steel support to strengthen a quake-vulnerable soft-story apartment building in Hollywood.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, about 200 soft-story buildings collapsed, including one apartment building in which 16 people died.

The report’s release comes 14 years after the first ShakeOut, a giant earthquake drill that asks residents to simulate what they would do in a temblor.

Of the 12,604 soft-story buildings identified by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, 8,228 have been retrofitted, or 65%. Retrofit building permits also have been issued for an additional 2,068 buildings.

The skinny, flimsy columns supporting this El Centro apartment building left the structure unstable after a 2010 earthquake

(Fred Turner/California Seismic Safety Commission)

The study by structural engineer Keith Porter, an expert on California seismic safety issues, estimated that the retrofit of 8,100 soft-story apartment buildings in Los Angeles — that was the total when the analysis was conducted — strengthened 117,000 housing units. Officials estimate that the typical retrofit of a soft-story building in LA costs $80,000 to $160,000.

Porter estimated that property owners in LA have spent $1.3 billion so far on these retrofits.

But the benefits are already immense. Porter calculated that the retrofits will reduce future financial losses by $41 billion and avert 1,500 deaths and 27,000 nonfatal injuries and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. The retrofits also are expected to prevent 5,000 housing units from collapsing and an additional 60,000 from being significantly damaged.

Calling it “a very cost-effective investment,” Porter calculated that every dollar invested in a retrofit will save $32 had the property owner not paid for seismic upgrades.

“These estimates omit important but hard-to-quantify benefits such as protecting mementos, pets, peace of mind, community and culture,” Porter wrote. “They ignore debris disposal, the energy embodied in repairing or replacing the buildings, and the increase in housing costs that accompany reduced housing supply.

“And this analysis is silent on the potential for displaced residents to become homeless, with attendant mental and physical health impacts, demands on public services and other harms,” he added.

“Retrofitting these buildings today will keep many tenants in their homes,” Porter said. “The retrofits will avoid thousands of injuries that would otherwise require emergency medical care, freeing up medical resources when they are in sudden, severe demand. The avoided losses benefit everyone.”

LA’s seismic retrofit law was passed after a Times analysis published in 2013 found that more than 1,000 old concrete buildings may be at risk of collapse in a major earthquake. The city had long known about the risk but had done little about it in the years after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Early in his term in January 2014, Garcetti announced a partnership with Jones to develop recommendations on addressing earthquake vulnerability issues. Jones, previously a scientist with the US Geological Survey, was a key figure behind ShakeOut, the name for both the giant earthquake drill and the release of a report in 2008 showing the effect of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault. In that scenario, scientists estimated a quake could cause 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage and other losses.

By the end of 2014, Garcetti proposed a sweeping set of seismic safety rules that won the unanimous support of the City Council the following year.

Vehicles crushed when a soft-story apartment building collapsed during the Northridge earthquake in 1994.

(Roland Otero/Los Angeles Times)

But the work is not done. Improvements on the reliability of the electrical grid and fuel pipelines has been uneven, Jones said, and she remains concerned about the stability of Southern California’s water supply.

LA has made slow progress on getting brittle concrete buildings retrofitted. City data show that only two of LA’s 1,337 brittle concrete buildings have received certificates of compliance showing they meet the standards of the retrofit law.

Owners of concrete buildings were given much longer to get them retrofitted — 25 years, compared with the seven years that owners of soft-story buildings had to upgrade.

Some owners of soft-story buildings began receiving orders to retrofit in 2016, meaning they still have some time before the seven-year deadline passes. Other owners started getting orders in 2017.

Concrete buildings can be especially deadly because they are so massive. The collapse of two concrete buildings in a quake in New Zealand in 2011 resulted in 133 deaths.

Jones remains particularly concerned about old brick buildings. A Times analysis in 2018 found that there were as many as 640 unreinforced masonry buildings in more than a dozen Inland Empire cities, including Riverside, Pomona and San Bernardino, that have been marked as dangerous but remained unretrofitted despite decades of warnings.

Little has been done to get those buildings retrofitted, despite the fact that the San Andreas fault runs through the region. By contrast, LA ordered that such structures be retrofitted or demolished decades ago.

In a statement, Garcetti said he hoped LA could be a model.

“While there’s still work to be done, we’ve positioned the city to continue expanding critical building requirements and serving as a model for cities around the world of what it looks like to be earthquake-ready,” he said.

In the 2011 New Zealand earthquake, more than 40 people died when brick and stone buildings collapsed. Most were not inside the buildings, but were killed by falling debris while on the sidewalk or in a vehicle on an adjacent road.

“It’s frustrating because we know those are ones that are going to kill people,” Jones said. “It requires thinking beyond the short term and believing in community and communal investments.”

Bricks from collapsed buildings fill a street in Christchurch, New Zealand, after an earthquake in 2011. More than 40 people died from the collapse of brick structures during the temblor.

(Martin Hunter/Getty Images)

Jones is also concerned about California’s minimum building standards, which still allow the construction of new buildings that can be so severely damaged in a major earthquake that they must be torn down. Quake safety advocates have promoted a new building standard that would have structures built stronger in the first place, so they can be repaired and reoccupied relatively quickly after a major temblor.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 vetoed a bill intended to strengthen the minimum construction requirements. The proposed law would have established a committee to evaluate whether a tougher building standard should be adopted and offer input on whether the new rule should be mandatory.

Porter has previously estimated that strengthening California’s minimum building standards would increase construction costs by 1% to 2%.

“Think of how many buildings have been built in downtown Los Angeles in the last 15 years. There’s a lot of them, and they are built to be a total financial loss” if built to the existing minimum construction standard, Jones said. “What’s going to happen to the economy of Southern California if we can’t use the buildings in downtown LA?”

The post L.A.’s $1-billion earthquake milestone: 8,000 constructing upgrades appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

By Belis Sly and Trish Donnelly

Pan-Med Enterprises, located in the prestigious Pacific Professional Building in San Francisco, has been serving the health needs of the Bay Area since 1984. Although the building was considered state-of-the-art when it first opened, it had not been updated since then.

Pan-Med’s Tony Najera checks out the newly installed HVAC controls.

Tony Najera, a veteran Pan-Med engineer and recently appointed Building Manager, recognized there was an opportunity to bring his building into the 21st century with modern, energy-efficient equipment updates. As soon as he took charge of the building’s energy management, Najera rolled out a complete overhaul project focused on achieving the company’s long-term energy goals while increasing occupant and patient comfort.

“When my board asked me about my 5-year energy savings plan, I told them we can get it done in 2 years with the help of PG&E,” said Najera.

(Hear more in this video about how Pan-Med Enterprises worked with PG&E to help save both energy and money.)

Due to the building’s expansive footprint, financing a complete energy overhaul out-of-pocket would not be feasible. Working closely with his PG&E account manager and energy solutions company, Gridium, Najera quickly put together a plan that outlined $2.6M worth of equipment upgrades to maximize energy and money savings. This planning enabled Pan-Med Enterprises to retrofit the whole building with PG&E’s 0% interest On-Bill Financing Program, and pay for the total project cost with monthly energy savings and no out-of-pocket costs.

Once the project plan was complete and the On-Bill Financing loan was approved, PG&E trade pro partner Gridium worked with design and construction partner NuWave Energy Solutions to install LED lighting, variable frequency drives, HVAC controls, and a smart building automation system to monitor and manage it all. All the work was done while the building was occupied, with no effect on Pan-Med’s operations.

Since completion, Pan-Med is saving 30% of electricity usage and 60% of gas usage, bringing in $270,000/994,000 kWh in yearly energy savings – meaning they can turn their focus back to caring for the members of their community.

Email Currents at Currents@pge.com.

The post Pacific Fuel and Electrical : San Francisco Medical Constructing Strikes into twenty first Century with Power Effectivity Upgrades appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A new renovation to the Garfield Center pool complex in San Francisco’s Mission District will add a new 316 m2 (3400 sf) clubhouse and connecting entry lobby, all brought to colorful life with a new mural celebrating Latinx culture. Courtesy Bruce Damonte

A new renovation to the Garfield Center in San Francisco’s Mission District has added a new 316 m2 (3400 sf) clubhouse and connecting entry lobby, all brought to colorful life with a new mural celebrating Latinx culture.

The upgrade of the natatorium, provided by TEF Design in a joint venture with Paulett Taggart Architects, removed nonconforming exterior additions and the south façade’s 1980 diptych mural, “Primal Sea,” was restored by its creator Precita Eyes. The building’s canted western façade, obscured over time, was restored with a glass curtain wall featuring a colorful mural, by Bay Area artist Favianna Rodriguez, celebrating the Latinx diaspora of immigrants in the Mission District.

Inside, the rehabilitated pool features a movable bulkhead to support simultaneous pool use by both lap swimmers and young children and elders with mobility challenges. Reconfigured and modernized restrooms and locker rooms enhance functionality and accessibility.

The glass entry lobby offers views through the courtyard and soccer fields beyond while supporting use of the clubhouse after pool hours. Clad in colored phenolic panels and housing public restrooms and a flexible multipurpose room, the new clubhouse defers to the historic natatorium and opens to a new courtyard connecting the structures.

The community hub has delayed its opening until July due to the pandemic.

The post San Francisco’s Garfield Heart will get new cultural-focused upgrades appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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In Bisbee, Arizona, the Copper Queen Library, founded in 1882, is 114 years old — and it shows.

The library, on the National Register of Historic Places, a hub for Brisbee families, has a leaky roof, and cracks in the facade. The ceiling in the young adult room collapsed recently, forcing the room to close for three weeks.

“You can follow the story of Bisbee through the story of our library, because we’ve been here all along,” said library manager Jason Macoviak.

The Copper Queen is at the center of community life: From hosting an event every Halloween for the community to bringing fairytales to life; to create a separate room for teens — until the ceiling collapsed and the room had to be closed for a time.

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“That is the hardest demographic to reach,” said Macoviak. “We lost that engagement for a bit.”

The Copper Queen Library

Hundreds of library buildings in the US are more than 100 years old and are in dire condition, according to a recent report from the American Library Association which estimates many of the nation’s 17,000 libraries need $32 billion dollars for construction and renovation.

During the pandemic many libraries across the country became lifelines for residents, providing everything from Wi-Fi from parking lots, notary services and curbside crafts projects for kids.

Although the average age of a library building is more than 40 years old, there has not been dedicated federal infrastructure funding since 1997.

As a result the buildings are plagued with old wiring, plumbing, leaky roofs, malfunctioning fire alarms and sprinklers, the report found. Because of the old wiring, they often lack internet access. At current funding levels it would take 25 years for the work to get done, the report found.

The McAlester Library

Nine states — Alaska, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Washington, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia — estimate their public libraries need more than $8 billion for construction and renovation.

American Library Association

The Build America’s Libraries Act, which was introduced back in January 2021, would fund upgrades to library infrastructure to recover from natural disasters, environmental hazards, and accessibility barriers. With Congress working on a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation plan, the Senate has until September 15th to finish allocating the funds. The ALA has lobbied to include the Build America’s Libraries Act in the new plan.

“We know that libraries are well loved by communities across the country,” said ALA President Patty Wong. “This legislation offers us an opportunity to reinvest in our libraries in a significant way to bring about a stronger equity throughout our community, and to make sure that we have libraries in our future.

“Libraries are not just bricks and mortar, but they are anchors within the community that need a little bit of structure in order to provide the service we deliver,” Wong said.

Throughout the pandemic, communities relied on libraries. And libraries found ways to deliver while other public facilities shut their doors.

A good example of how libraries got creative during COVID-19 is in the work of a consortium of 34 public libraries in rural upstate New York.

“During COVID-19 it was sometimes the only place in town to get things,” said consortium director Sara Dallas of the branches. Hamilton County libraries provided access to materials and Wi-Fi 24/7, so their parking lots were filled, even to the streets across the library.

“The Indian Lake Public Library provided takeaway crafts to kids curbside so families would have activities to do with their children,” said Dallas, “and often these libraries were the only places with notaries and access to printing documents curbside.”

The Whitehall Free Library

The Whitehall Free Library

California libraries distributed Chromebooks, laptops and hotspots to students during the pandemic, Wong said.

“We’ve seen firsthand that so many in our community were lined up or parked in (library) parking lots, using the Wi Fi because they didn’t have digital access at home,” said Wong of libraries in her state of California.

Some projects have had to be put on hold because California libraries need close to $5 billion in infrastructure funds, she added.

At the Copper Queen in Bisbee, Arizona, Macoviak said last year’s Halloween party was called off because of the pandemic. This year he hopes the event will go on.

Teens have already started holding monthly planning meetings.

To Macoviak, the event and all the enthusiasm and planning surrounding it underscores the importance of libraries and the need to keep them functioning.

The Copper Queen Library

“They create their own program, and take ownership of their library,” said Macoviak. “It just shows the utter importance of having these spaces available.”

Libraries, he continued, “are safe. They’re open to everybody. No matter who you are, how much money you make, or what your status is.”

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The post Leaky Roofs, Dangerous Plumbing, No Web: Advocates Say America’s Libraries Want $32 Billion for Infrastructure Upgrades appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) – San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed a $ 400 million bond on Tuesday for the June 2022 vote to improve safety and reliability along Muni’s bus and train routes raise.

According to Breed’s office, the Muni Reliability and Street Safety Bond is needed to upgrade and maintain the outdated facilities and equipment of the San Francisco Transportation Municipal Agency.

CONTINUE READING: UPDATE: Loud hum on the Golden Gate Bridge should finally be silenced next year

In addition, the loan would also help fund road infrastructure projects and modernize Muni’s train control system, which would increase metro capacity and reduce delays.

The loan would also fund road safety and traffic improvement projects aimed at reducing collisions.

“A reliable transportation system and safe roads are essential for the long-term health of our city and our residents,” Breed said in a statement. “The investments from this proposed bond, along with substantial new federal government funding, will enable us to modernize our facilities, upgrade our systems, and make Muni more efficient for everyone.”

Jeff Tumlin, SFMTA’s director of transportation, said, “With the recently passed Federal Infrastructure Bill, funding from this bond would enable the SFMTA to tap nearly $ 1 billion in matching federal and state government funds to meet San Francisco’s local transportation needs cover. including repairing and updating our aging and obsolete bus yards and equipment that is nearly 100 years old and cannot accommodate our modern, clean fleet. “

CONTINUE READING: UPDATE: Residents skeptical about San Francisco mayor’s promise to get drugs and crime out of Tenderloin

In order to be guaranteed for the June vote, at least eight of the eleven supervisory boards must approve the bond. Then two-thirds of San Francisco voters would have to vote for the measure to be passed if it were put on the ballot.

Last week, the SFMTA board unanimously approved a resolution urging the board of directors to put the bond to a vote.

Both supervisory board president Shamann Walton and supervisory board chairman Rafael Mandelman have pledged their support for the bond.

“The demands on San Francisco’s transportation system have increased, and revenues from transit fares and parking fees have not kept pace. COVID-19 only exacerbated the problem, ”said Gwyneth Borden, chairman of the board of directors of SFMTA. “We have to keep the city moving. This important source of funding will have a positive impact on everyone who lives, works, and visits San Francisco. “

MORE NEWS: Newsom highlights a $ 1 billion nationwide plan to clean up highways, streets and public spaces

© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The post $400 Million Bond For Muni Upgrades Proposed By Mayor London Breed – CBS San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Officials hope the new community will provide a safer alternative to shelters, but it brings its own challenges.

Allison Artzer has been homeless for over three years, much of it on the streets of San Francisco. Ten months ago, while sitting on a curb with all her belongings, the 36-year-old was approached by a member of the San Francisco homeless outreach team and given them a tent in one of the city’s “safe sleeping villages” at 33 Gough Street offered. on Marktstrasse.

Artzer, who often had their belongings stolen on the streets or thrown away by police officers, said yes.

She found it was a big improvement over the street as it had a central place to store her belongings and a separate room for them. But the tent has some drawbacks. When it rains, her things get wet and some are destroyed no matter how many tarps she throws over them. At night the temperature can drop to almost 45 degrees and she has to snuggle under blankets to fight the cold. She shares a tent with her partner and because the tents are so thin they cannot have private conversations.

So she was excited when she heard that the city would replace her tent with a small hut with a lockable door, bed, desk, and space heater.

“My life has changed for the better in the last 10 months, I only have one place to call home even though it’s a tent,” she says. “Now I want to start looking for a job again and be a normal person again.”

San Francisco officials announced in September that they would build a tiny hometown on Gough Street, which is currently allowing tents to be assembled with on-site security. The 44 tents will be replaced by around 70 tiny homes, each with around 64 square meters, in two parking spaces that the city has rented.

The apartments are part of a pilot project that will run for 18 months. After that, the city’s lease for the Gough Street parking lot will expire. The project is coordinated by the city, but funded by DignityMoves – part of an umbrella organization that pools private capital for social issues – and a non-profit donor called Tipping Point. Urban Alchemy, another non-profit organization, is already providing social services to the tent community and will continue these services for the tiny homes. (Urban Alchemy also provides services to two other safe sleeping villages in San Francisco.)

The project is one of several announced earlier this year when the Mayor of San Francisco London Breed invested more than $ 1 billion in the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing over two years, an investment that includes an RV park .

Elizabeth Funk, CEO of Dignity Capital, which formed the group DignityMoves that will fund the property, says the city has spent relatively little on temporary housing until recently. The tents and Tiny Home model are designed to provide a more hospitable alternative to street homelessness, offering privacy and security not available in dormitories.

“We really believe that the fact that people have their own private space is going to be a game changer,” says Funk.

The sites are also designed to help people transition into a more stable mental state after the trauma of living on the street.

“I can tell you firsthand that everyone experiences trauma while they’re homeless,” said Andrea Urton, CEO of HomeFirst Services in Santa Clara County, who says she used to be homeless.

“You are in an elevated state of panic and crisis,” she says. “Your health deteriorates, your mental problem-solving abilities deteriorate over time.” Urton says that it takes three to six months in stable housing for people to clear their heads.

HomeFirst will be a consultant for the San Francisco Tiny Home Project and will bring their experience building San Jose’s first Tiny Home community. In addition to the lessons learned there, Urton said, it is critical that staff are available to help with a speedy relocation.

While Funk with Dignity Capital isn’t sure how long the stays will be, they’re modeling their approach to Life Moves, which is funded by Project Homekey, a nationwide program designed to convert unused spaces into apartments, a small house community in Mountain View has erected. Average stays on the Mountain View site range from 90 to 100 days. This site also has on-site psychiatric care, nurses, and social workers, which the Gough Street site does not.

The expectation of a quick relocation for the tiny San Francisco community may be related to the desires of their financiers. DignityMoves is a coalition of business owners across the Bay Area who wanted to solve the street homelessness problem. Funk admits that some business owners have “selfish reasons” to want to help, probably out of fear that street homelessness has reduced spending in commercial corridors.

Urton says if the San Francisco location is moving quickly, having staff available to handle housing issues is critical. “If the units aren’t linked to rapid relocation services, it will take a long time to relocate people permanently,” she says.

However, Lena Miller, who runs Urban Alchemy, says that expecting a quick relocation of residents to the Gough Street site may not be realistic because there aren’t enough permanent housing units to move people quickly. She also believes that many residents have basic issues, such as mental health and substance abuse, that need to be addressed.

Artzer says her attempts to find an apartment in the sleeping village on Gough Street have been unsuccessful. She was interviewed twice for accommodation but failed to qualify. She says the apartments offered are primarily for people with mental health problems or physical disabilities that she does not have. “My only problem is that I’m homeless,” she says. In the 10 months she was in the sleeping village, she said that only 6 people she knew were placed in permanent shelter.

Urban Alchemy has two “Care Coordinators” at Gough Street each day who connect residents to outside facilities when they need social workers, plus another 5-6 people who work throughout the day to resolve conflicts and on day-to-day tasks help. Miller says the nonprofit will likely hire another care coordinator once the tiny homes are built, as it will get more funding to deal with adding two dozen people to the population.

Officials in San Francisco claim the tiny home project will have a cheaper cost per person than maintaining 44 tents across the property. Most of the cost of the tent village is security and other staff costs, as the tents themselves cost a little over a hundred dollars each. The city reckons that by increasing the population density with tiny homes that are closer together than the tents, they can lower the cost per person while spending more money.

It is unclear whether this prediction will come true. HomeFirst’s Urton says one of the lessons learned from the San Jose project was that the cost was higher than expected.

“We budgeted a lot less for electricity than planned,” she says. “It’s a lot more expensive than we thought.” She also pointed out the need for licensed therapists, social workers and drug treatments in small shared apartments to help people transition into society.

But Urban Alchemy’s Miller says it’s unlikely either the city or private donors will want to cover those costs at the Gough Street site, even with the city’s $ 1.2 billion homeless budget.

“There’s probably more than can be done,” she says, “you need therapists, drug treatment, it’s extremely urgent.” While most people are homeless due to economic hardship or a lack of housing, the residents of the safe sleeping villages have San Francisco has an above-average number of people with addictions and mental illnesses, according to Miller.

“An extremely high percentage of the villagers have a double diagnosis,” she says. “If you add up the addiction services that people really need to recover and thrive, the price will be astronomical.”

For Artzer, who says that she has neither addiction nor mental illness and describes herself as healthy, a safe tent in the sleeping village is an immeasurable help. She became homeless for the first time three years ago while working as a waitress. When a number of housing situations went wrong, she lost her deposits and could not afford a new apartment. She ended up renting nightly hotels, but the distance from work resulted in her missing her shifts and eventually losing her job. She soon found herself on the streets with no income.

“It was so quick to be a normal person working inside being outside, it was scary,” she says. “You get used to it, I think.”

Roshan Abraham is Next City’s Housing Correspondent and a former Equitable Cities Fellow. He is based in Queens. Follow him on Twitter at @roshantone.

The post San Francisco Upgrades Tent Village to Tiny Dwelling Group appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Allison Artzer has been homeless for over three years, much of it on the streets of San Francisco. Ten months ago, while sitting on a curb with all her belongings, the 36-year-old was approached by a member of the San Francisco homeless outreach team and offered a tent in one of the city’s “safe sleeping villages” at 33 Gough Street. on Marktstrasse.

Artzer, who often had their belongings stolen on the streets or thrown away by police officers, said yes.

She found it was a big improvement over the street as it had a central location for her belongings and a dedicated room. But the tent has some drawbacks. When it rains, her things get wet and some are destroyed no matter how many tarps she throws over them. At night, the temperature can drop to nearly 45 degrees and she has to snuggle under blankets to fight the cold. She shares a tent with her partner and because the tents are so thin they cannot have private conversations.

So she was excited when she heard that the city would replace her tent with a small hut with a lockable door, bed, desk and space heater.

“My life has changed for the better in the last 10 months, I only have one place to call home even though it’s a tent,” she says. “Now I want to start again, having a job and being a normal person again.”

San Francisco officials announced in September that they would build a tiny hometown on Gough Street, which currently allows for a collection of tents with on-site security. The 44 tents will be replaced by around 70 tiny homes, each with around 64 square meters, in two parking spaces that the city has rented.

The homes are part of an 18-month pilot project that will expire the city’s lease in the Gough Street parking lot. The project is coordinated by the city, but funded by DignityMoves – part of an umbrella organization that pools private capital for social issues – and a non-profit donor called Tipping Point. Urban Alchemy, another non-profit organization, is already providing social services to the tent community and will continue these services for the tiny homes. (Urban Alchemy also provides services to two other safe sleeping villages in San Francisco.)

The project is one of several announced earlier this year when the Mayor of San Francisco London Breed invested more than $ 1 billion in the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing within two years, an investment that includes an RV park .

Elizabeth Funk, CEO of Dignity Capital, which formed the group DignityMoves that will fund the property, says the city has spent relatively little on temporary housing until recently. The tents and tiny home model are designed to provide a more hospitable alternative to street homelessness, offering privacy and security not available in dormitories.

“We really believe that it will be a decisive factor when people have their own private space,” says Funk.

The sites are also designed to help people transition into a more stable mental state after the trauma of living on the street.

“I can tell you firsthand that everyone experiences trauma while homeless,” said Andrea Urton, CEO of HomeFirst Services in Santa Clara County, who says she used to be homeless.

“You are in an increased state of panic and crisis,” she says. “Your health deteriorates, your mental problem-solving abilities deteriorate over time.” Urton says it takes three to six months in stable housing for people to clear their minds.

HomeFirst will be a consultant for the San Francisco Tiny Home Project and will bring their experience building San Jose’s first tiny home community. One of the lessons learned there, said Urton, is that it is of vital importance to have staff available to help with the rapid relocation.

While Funk with Dignity Capital isn’t sure how long the stays will be, they’re modeling their approach to Life Moves, which is a small house community in Mountain View with money from Project Homekey, a statewide program that aims to convert unused space into living space built up. Average stays on the Mountain View website are between 90 and 100 days. This location also has on-site psychiatric care, nurses and social workers, which the Gough Street location does not.

The expectation of a quick relocation for the tiny San Francisco community may be related to the desires of their financiers. DignityMoves is an association of business owners across the Bay Area who wanted to solve the street homelessness problem. Funk admits that some business owners have “selfish reasons” to want to help, probably out of fear that street homelessness has reduced spending in commercial corridors.

Urton says if the San Francisco location is moving quickly, having staff available to handle housing issues is critical. “Unless there are quick relocation services connected to the units, it will take a long time to relocate people permanently,” she says.

However, Lena Miller, who runs Urban Alchemy, says that expecting a quick relocation of residents to the Gough Street site may not be realistic because there aren’t enough permanent housing units to move people quickly. She also believes that many residents have basic issues, such as mental health and substance abuse, that need to be addressed.

Artzer says her attempts to find an apartment in the sleeping village on Gough Street have been unsuccessful. She was interviewed twice for accommodation but failed to qualify. She says the accommodations offered have been preferred for people with mental health problems or physical disabilities that she does not have. “My only problem is that I’m homeless,” she says. In the 10 months she was in the sleeping village, she says that only 6 people she knew were put into permanent shelter.

Urban Alchemy has two “Care Coordinators” at Gough Street each day who connect residents with outside agencies when they need social workers, plus another 5-6 people who work throughout the day to resolve conflicts and on day-to-day tasks help. Miller says the nonprofit will likely hire another care coordinator once the tiny homes are built, as it will get more funding to deal with adding two dozen people to the population.

Officials in San Francisco claim the tiny home project will have a cheaper per person cost than maintaining 44 tents on the property. Most of the cost of the tent village is security and other staff costs, as the tents themselves cost a little over a hundred dollars each. The city reckons that by increasing the population density in the square with tiny homes that are closer together than the tents, the cost per person can be reduced while they are spending more money.

It is unclear whether this prediction will come true. HomeFirst’s Urton says one of the lessons learned from the San Jose project was that the cost was higher than expected.

“We budgeted a lot less for electricity than planned,” she says. “It’s a lot more expensive than we thought.” She also pointed to the need for licensed therapists, social workers and drug treatments in small shared apartments to help people transition into society.

But Urban Alchemy’s Miller says it’s unlikely either the city or private donors will want to cover those costs at the Gough Street site, even with the city’s $ 1.2 billion homeless budget.

“There’s probably more than can be done,” she says, “you need therapists, drug treatment, that’s an extremely high need.” While most people are homeless due to economic hardship or lack of housing, the residents have the safer According to Miller, San Francisco sleep villages have an above-average number of people with addictions and mental illnesses.

“An extremely high percentage of the people who live in the village have a double diagnosis,” she says. “If you add up the addiction services that people really need to recover and thrive, the price will be astronomical.”

For Artzer, who says she has no addiction or mental illness and describes herself as healthy, a safe tent in the sleeping village is an immeasurable help. She became homeless for the first time three years ago while working as a waitress. When a number of housing situations went wrong, she lost her deposits and could not afford a new apartment. She ended up renting hotels nightly, but the distance from work resulted in her missing shifts and eventually losing her job. She soon found herself on the streets with no income.

“It was just so quick to work inside as a normal person, to be outside, it was scary,” she says. “You get used to it, I think.”

Roshan Abraham is Next City’s Housing Correspondent and a former Equitable Cities Fellow. He is based in Queens. Follow him on Twitter at @roshantone.

The post San Francisco Upgrades Tent Village to Tiny House Group appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Air filters have become big business in the age of COVID-19 for the HVAC companies who can get their hands on them.

As indoor air quality becomes a major concern in businesses, HVAC companies struggle to keep up with the demand for high quality filtration systems.

It turns out that air filters are made from similar materials used in face masks and other personal protective equipment and are therefore in short supply, said Gregg Little, president of Springbank Mechanical Systems in southern Ontario.

“We work with dozens of different developers and they all look at this,” says Little.

Claudio Mastronardi, Toronto office manager at Carmichael Engineering Ltd., says his HVAC company is jumping into buying inventory of quality filters to discourage customers from facing four to six weeks turnaround time.

“The demand is very high right now. People put their health and safety above cost,” says Mastronardi.

The Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board identified “indoor air quality” as one of the major real estate trends emerging from the pandemic and noted that the pandemic “created greater demand for air purifiers, ranging from standalone models to sophisticated intelligent systems “. Portable air purifiers are also becoming increasingly difficult to find, notes Jeffrey Siegel, a Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering professor who studies indoor air quality.

That doesn’t mean business has been easy for HVAC companies, notes Little, who says many customers have cut their maintenance budgets because they can’t afford to stay open. The demand for a rollercoaster ride was high as some customers who had originally switched to fancier filters could not afford the cost, while dental and medical office purchases that went “crazy” this spring and bought air filters and have since calmed down.

Even so, HVAC operators have seen new recognition for their expertise in the light of COVID-19, Little says, and engineers have a choice between customers who may not have thought much before about the person turning their heating on, Mastronardi says.

Demand for HVAC companies has increased as local jurisdictions force tenants to look at their buildings’ HVAC systems. The Toronto Medical Officer of Health urged companies on Nov. 14 to check their HVAC systems to make sure they are working and air exchange settings are improved, using filters with the highest efficiency, and not blocking vents or placing furniture directly underneath .

However, the city’s health officials also note that “there is no evidence that air purifiers alone are effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19,” and that they may be useful to supplement HVAC ventilation or when it does is not an exchange of outside air. “

Little says he recommends steady HVAC maintenance schedules, but has spent a lot of time this year personally reviewing some of the newer air cleaner products on the market. Little says he’s still skeptical of some of them, such as dry hydrogen peroxide.

Another technology that is catching on, bipolar ionization, doesn’t have a lot of independent data to back it up, Siegel says. The process has been around for decades, but many of the studies are of “questionable independence,” says Siegel.

“I know they are being promoted very heavily. But the technology is an unproven technology. You want to be very, very careful when a manufacturer comes up with some reports and shows you that it works,” Siegel says. “It can play a role. It just hasn’t proven effective in the context of this.”

That hasn’t stopped some landlords from opting for air purification.

Brookfield says its offices in New York, Toronto and Calgary are testing advanced ventilation and filtration systems. The system is to be extended to all office properties. The Brookfield system, which uses bipolar ionization, was considered prior to the pandemic to reduce energy consumption and emissions. But the company is now betting that tenants will see buildings with older air systems as “obsolete,” Brian Kingston, managing director of Brookfield Property Partners, said at an investor event this fall.

Air filters can be used to slow the spread of COVID-19 and it is very important that buildings meet minimum ventilation standards set by professionals. However, Siegel cautions that adding better air filters isn’t a panacea.

“If an infected person and an uninfected person are close together, the virus will not be captured, even if there is a great filter system elsewhere,” says Siegel.

“I consider it a secondary measure. The primary measures are wearing masks, people who are physically so far apart, hand washing and surface cleaning ΓÇ, and making sure rooms are not poorly ventilated.”

A portable HEPA filter can be used in almost any room, Siegel says, as long as it’s the right size and isn’t positioned to spit unfiltered air onto a person or touch-sensitive surface. However, upgrading the filters of a centralized system can be more cost effective, Siegel says, if the system can handle it.

Proper installation is a breeze, according to Siegel, especially with thicker filters and more high-tech air cleaning technology like UV lamps. Little warns that builders should look for HVAC companies that can provide customer testimonials on air filtration.

“There are a lot of people who take advantage of bad situations,” says Little.

This Canadian press report was first published on November 22, 2020.

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