Berkeley residents can get $3K to brace homes against earthquakes

City officials are urging Berkeleyans to apply to the state’s Earthquake Brace + Bolt program, which provides $3,000 grants to homeowners who refurbish their building foundations to better withstand earthquakes.

The grant program is run by statewide lottery administered by the California Residential Mitigation Program.

Homeowners can check the program website to see if they live in a qualifying ZIP code. They must live in the buildings they intend to reinforce and the buildings must have been built before 1980. There are a number of other criteria the buildings and applicants must meet.

There are supplemental grants of up to $7,000 available to homeowners with lower household incomes. The threshold to qualify has risen slightly since last year from $87,360 to $89,040.

The current lottery is open until Feb. 26.

Other programs are, were or will be available to Berkeley homeowners and businesses with different types of architecture.

An “Earthquake Soft Story Retrofit Program,” also administered by the California Residential Mitigation Program, offers reimbursements to eligible owners of some more recent single-family homes for homes that have a living space or “soft story” above a garage.

Berkeley has also administered its own grant funding programs for seismic retrofits in recent years.

The city keeps a list of seismic retrofits mandated by its municipal building code on its website, along with a list of recommendations for earthquake safety.