A Review of Portland, Oregon’s URM Policy Recommendations and the Potential Impacts on Low-Income Communities

With an increased effort to improve public safety during an earthquake event, several cities and regions have developed and/or are developing unreinforced masonry (URM) retrofit policies. One of those cities is Portland, Oregon. In October 2019, the City Council of Portland continued its process, with origins in 1995, towards developing a voluntary seismic retrofit policy. This paper reviews Portland’s process and develops a socio-economic equity analysis framework that can complement the process. The framework synthesizes socioeconomic data and Portland’s URM Building Database to assess the relationship between socio-economic status and the spatial distribution of existing URM buildings. The framework is also used to identify aspects of Portland’s URM policy recommendations that can potentially have negative impacts on low-income residents. Finally, results from the analysis are used to put forth suggested policy considerations. The findings of this work could inform Portland in developing a robust and equitable URM policy that mitigates the severity of earthquake damage, without imposing an undue burden on low-income areas in Portland.