Governor Newsom Statement on Court Ruling on Affordable Housing in the Southern California Community of La Cañada Flintridge
Submitted by California Governor’s Office
SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom issued the following statement today after the Los Angeles Superior Court rejected arguments by the city of La Cañada Flintridge, an affluent community of about 20,000 residents in Southern California, that it did not have to comply with state housing laws.
In December of last year, Governor Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), announced that the state would seek to intervene in the case of California Housing Defense Fund v. City of La Cañada Flintridge to uphold California’s housing laws, and reverse the City of La Cañada Flintridge’s denial of a mixed-use project that would create 80 mixed-income residential dwelling units, 14 hotel units, and 7,791 square feet of office space.
The court determined that the city violated the Housing Accountability Act (HAA) when it refused to process the developer’s application under California’s “Builder’s Remedy” – a provision of the HAA that prohibits a local government from denying a housing project for very low, low-, or moderate-income households, based on inconsistency with zoning or land use designation, while the city’s housing element was not in substantial compliance with state law.
The city has been ordered to reverse its denial of the project and process the application under the HAA.
“Under the Housing Accountability Act (HAA), Government Code1 section 65589.5, a municipality may not “disapprove” a qualifying affordable housing project on the grounds it does not comply with the municipality’s zoning and general plan if the developer submitted either a statutorily defined “preliminary application” or a “complete development application” while the city’s housing element was not in substantial compliance with state law. (See§ 65589.5, subds. (d)(S), (h)(S), (o)(l).) This statutory provision, colloquially known as the “Builder’s Remedy,” incentivizes compliance with the Housing Element Law by temporarily suspending the power of non-compliant municipalities to enforce their zoning rules agairst qualifying affordable housing projects. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024-03-04-Order-Granting-Petitions.pdf.
