San Francisco is in the process of doing something revolutionary: the City is heeding the warning of the moderate damage caused by the Loma Prieta earthquake, and may mandate strong rehabilitation measures for soft-story buildings to prevent catastrophe in future quakes. A study for the City, the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS), recently estimated the consequences of several moderate to large Bay Area earthquakes on multi-unit, soft-story wood-frame dwellings. The project estimates that tens of thousands of residents of these buildings would be displaced from their homes, many for years, after a large earthquake, but retrofits would greatly reduce these impacts. Remarkably, it was building owner and tenant groups, not structural engineers, who actively led the discussion about whether mandatory mitigation makes sense. The project, with support from many community groups, calls for mandatory retrofit of the most vulnerable of these buildings.