Soft-story retrofits
and your other permit.

Correcting the premise, first

Soft-story retrofit isn't a requirement that gets triggered the moment you apply for an unrelated permit — it's its own mandatory citywide program under Ordinance 183893, with its own deadlines that apply regardless of whether you're renovating anything else. Roughly 13,500 buildings in LA are covered by it. If yours isn't one of them, pulling a kitchen or ADU permit has nothing to do with soft-story compliance at all.

What actually qualifies as a covered building

The ordinance covers wood-frame buildings permitted or built before January 1, 1978, with four or more dwelling units, where the ground floor has open parking or similar open space — the classic "tuck-under parking" configuration that performed badly in past LA earthquakes.

The actual deadlines

Priority 1 buildings had a compliance deadline of April 2024 — most have completed retrofits or are deep into enforcement by now. Priority 2 buildings face an April 2026 deadline, which is inside a year away as of this writing. Compliance means submitted retrofit plans, an issued building permit, completed construction, and a passed final inspection — all four, not just the paperwork.

So where does an unrelated permit actually get complicated?

Here's the honest answer: LADBS doesn't publish a blanket rule saying an unrelated permit gets automatically blocked for soft-story non-compliance. But a non-compliant building carries open code-enforcement status with the city, and it's a documented, active enforcement priority — which means plan check on an unrelated application can, in practice, get flagged or held while that status gets sorted out. If that happens to you, the fix isn't to argue the unrelated permit's merits; it's to contact LADBS's Soft-Story Retrofit Unit directly and resolve the underlying compliance question.

What this actually costs if you ignore it

Fines accrue daily for non-compliant buildings past deadline and can reach tens of thousands of dollars. Unpaid fines can become liens against the property, which follows you into any future sale, refinance, or title search — well beyond whatever unrelated remodel you were trying to permit in the first place.

What this means for your project

If you own an older multi-unit LA building and you're not certain of its soft-story status, that's the first call to make — before submitting for anything else, not after a plan checker flags it. We check this as a matter of course on any pre-1978 multi-unit property before we scope a project, specifically so it doesn't surface as a surprise mid-permit.