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Wilson

EBB Participant
San Mateo, CA

"We’re 100 percent happy. I recommend EBB to anybody."

Wilson’s story: In His Own Words

"It’s our starter house—the first house my wife and I owned.

When we first moved back to the Bay Area, it was just my wife and me. Now we have two kids, two cats and a dog (Penny). That’s a lot of living beings depending on us to have four walls and a roof around them. We knew if we didn’t retrofit, the damage and cost to repair our house after a big earthquake would be multiples of what the retrofit cost is now.

I’ve lived in this area since the early ‘80s and lived through the Loma Prieta earthquake [1]. I know the next big one will be coming one day. That’s why we wanted to retrofit our home. The EBB program gave us the kick start we needed to finally get it done.

The retrofit took one full week and it could not have gone any better. I think often when you work with the government you are a little wary about how long things are going to take, and I was especially wary about how long it would take to get the money back! I thought it would take forever; but, it turned around quickly.

I did a search for contractors listed on the EBB Directory and working in our area. Then I went to Yelp to check the reviews. That’s how we found the contractor we hired, and they knew what they were doing. They took care of uploading the required documents and they were awesome.

When I uploaded additional documents, they were approved within a day. I was impressed. The check from EBB arrived within a week or less.

It went flawlessly, smooth as I could have hoped. The program is very well put together-- very efficient. We’re 100 percent happy. I recommend EBB to anybody.

I hope we never have to use it but I feel much better knowing we are retrofitted!"


[1] M6.9 October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, USGS

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