Earthquake

Allowing owners to pass quake retrofit costs to tenants

Los Angeles City Coun­cil­man Bern­ard C. Parks wants to al­low own­ers who seis­mic­ally ret­ro­fit apart­ment build­ings to pass on the costs of earth­quake strength­en­ing to ten­ants. He said he wants the city to ex­plore giv­ing apart­ment own­ers an ex­emp­tion from the city’s rent con­trol law as part of a lar­ger ef­fort by city of­fi­cials to get thou­sands of build­ings vul­ner­able to col­lapse dur­ing a ma­jor temblor strengthened.