The relationship between the earthquake performance of an inventory of buildings and the seismic resilience of a residential community is examined, by quantifying the immediate post-earthquake reduction and recovery of the shelter-in-place housing capacity. The effect of several mitigation strategies that involve replacing portions of the existing building stock with an enhanced seismic performance system is evaluated. The impact on community resilience is assessed based on the immediate and cumulative loss of permanent housing occupancy as well as the time to recover some fraction of the pre-earthquake housing capacity. The results show how the slope of the recovery curve for occupiable housing during different periods following the event can be linked to the distribution of building damage. In addition to limiting major damage, enhanced building seismic performance is shown to reduce aggregate losses over the recovery period, thereby having a significant effect on both the safety and resilience of residential communities.