You Can't Backdate Compliance: La Cañada Flintridge and 600 Foothill

You filed under the Housing Accountability Act's Builder's Remedy — the tool that bars a city which has missed its housing-element deadline from using its zoning or general plan to turn your affordable project away. Then the counter shifts. The city doesn't deny the project outright. It calls your application "incomplete," tells you the Builder's Remedy doesn't apply, and — here's the move — declares that its housing element was in compliance all along, back to the day it was adopted. Just like that, the protection you filed under seems to vanish.

Here's the thing: HCD says a city doesn't get to do that.

What happened at 600 Foothill

The 80-unit mixed-use project at 600 Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada Flintridge set aside 20 percent of its units (16 units) for lower-income households, and HCD found it qualified as a "housing development project" under the HAA. When the applicant filed, the City did not have a housing element that HCD had found in substantial compliance.

The City's planning division issued an incompleteness letter finding the Builder's Remedy would not apply, that the project was therefore inconsistent with the Mixed-Use 2 designation, and that the applicant had to resubmit at 12-15 units per acre — a fraction of what was proposed. The City Council upheld that determination by adopting Resolution 23-14, resting on the claim that the City's October 4, 2022 housing element was in substantial compliance, "regardless of HCD's finding to the contrary."

HCD reviewed the City's own staff report and, on June 8, 2023, issued a Notice of Violation. Its verdict on the City's findings was one word: "flawed."

Verified against HCD's Notice of Violation to the City of La Cañada Flintridge — "Denial of 600 Foothill Boulevard Housing Project" (June 8, 2023).

A city can't grade its own homework

The core of HCD's position is about who gets to decide compliance. In HCD's words:

"A local jurisdiction has no authority to determine that its adopted element is in substantial compliance with State Housing Element Law."

A city can adopt an element and argue its case, but under HCD's reading compliance dates from HCD's finding — not the city's own declaration. And HCD found this element short. The October 4, 2022 version was never found compliant; a revised version adopted February 21, 2023 came more than a year past the October 15, 2021 statutory deadline, and HCD's April 24, 2023 findings letter still put the City out of compliance pending required rezoning.

So the retroactive claim collapses. As the letter puts it:

"The City cannot "backdate" its housing element compliance date to an earlier date so as to avoid approving a Builder's Remedy application."

And on the project itself:

"Here, because the City does not have a substantially compliant housing element, it may not disapprove an affordable housing project for inconsistency with the zoning and land use designation."

Why this matters if you're building

Two takeaways from HCD's position, both useful the moment a city tries to move the goalposts.

First, your vesting date is what counts. HCD's letter states that where a preliminary application is filed while the city is out of compliance, that noncompliant status is locked in throughout entitlement: "This rule applies even if the jurisdiction subsequently achieves compliance." A city that cures its element later doesn't get to retroactively strip a project that vested earlier.

Second, "incomplete" is not a place to hide a zoning denial. HCD flagged that deeming the project incomplete because it was inconsistent with zoning was itself improper: "Inconsistency with local zoning standards is a reason to deny an application in some circumstances, but it is not a basis for deeming an application incomplete."

One caution, stated plainly: this is HCD's enforcement position, not a court ruling. HCD letters interpret the law; courts have the final word, and only housing-element decertification self-executes. If a city tells you its element was compliant all along, don't take that at face value — but don't take this post as legal advice either. Confirm your jurisdiction's actual HCD compliance history, and run it past your own counsel, before you rely on any of it.

What CrossBeam does with it

When the letter lands on your desk, CrossBeam turns it around the same day: what each item is actually asking, the code or law behind it, and a written response you can hand to your team or your attorney — the back-and-forth that used to eat weeks, done in a couple of hours.