“It’s a long way down.”
When Cedar Street Partners’ Jonathan Curtis said this to a guest peering over the edge of the 20th floor patio at a Glendale co-working space, it was hard not to hear something deeper.
Cedar Street just came out victorious in a multi-year saga with the city of La Cañada Flintridge, winning the first successful builder’s remedy case in California Superior Court for its 80-unit mixed-use project at 600 Foothill Boulevard and setting a path for other developers to build.
But the fight may have left its scars, in time, stress and now soured relationships with some officials.
Still, there was an enormous payoff. The Foothill project set new case law and is now viewed as a warning to municipalities that this isn’t the time to mess around with the state’s pro-housing goals. The La Cañada mayor at the time of the Foothill project settlements, Mike Davitt, referred questions to current Mayor Kim Bowman. Bowman declined to comment for this story.
By the time it won city council approval last year, the Cedar Street development ultimately had the backing of Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who have been focused in their pursuit of more housing.
Now, Curtis, a 25-year La Cañada resident who once sat on the city council, is looking at draft plans of the project, excited to show off the designs as Cedar Street lines up capital and considers its building materials.
“Now, there’s the will to enforce.”
“If you were to look back during the time I was on the council and housing elements were a requirement under the state, the [California Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD] and others didn’t have the tools to enforce it, and there wasn’t the will to enforce it,” Curtis said.
“Now, there’s the will to enforce.”
Spurred by a governor who wants action on housing development, builder’s remedy project proposals have surged in the past few years. But getting a project through the legal system isn’t easy, which is why the Cedar Street win matters so much.
Curtis’s “long way down” is apt, since the story starts in 1969, when California required cities and counties to map out long-term housing plans for residents at various income levels. Known as housing elements, these plans are part of local governments’ general plans and get updated either every five or eight years; the HCD must approve them.
The period when a housing element is awaiting certification is especially filled with possibility for developers. Until a plan has approval, developers can bypass local zoning laws and file what’s known as a builder’s remedy project application. This “remedy” has been possible since 1990 but was rarely used until recently.
Though discord among developers, local governments and residents over control of local land-use decisions continues, the Cedar Street win is a clear sign of California’s direction: The state can dictate local development and land use.
The rest of the nation, grappling with a housing shortage, is watching how this will play out.
Building on their own terms
Think of the parties to housing element plans as three legs on a stool: developers, residents and city councils.
At various points, any of their perspectives could be considered right in a theoretical argument. But under Newsom, the winning position is whichever gets moving on housing starts.
The case law set with the Cedar Street win crystallizes that point. In the event housing law and the interpretation of builder’s remedy wasn’t clear, Bonta made sure to attach the Foothill project court decision to a June legal alert sent to all 539 jurisdictions in the state.
This reality has made its way to local lawmakers.
“The production of housing is very important to HCD,” Bryan Swanson, community development director in Saratoga, said in November. He was advising the city council in the Santa Clara County city to accept a memorandum of understanding with a developer called City Connect Real Estate Development. The state approved Saratoga’s housing element in July 2024, with the plan, good through 2031, identifying a need for 1,712 additional homes. In the time before the housing element’s approval, developers clamored to get their builder’s remedy applications in, and the city faced more than 20 proposed projects.
The agreement Swanson suggested had to do with a project known as Vineyard One. The proposed idea was to take the unit count from 231 to 64. In exchange for the approval, City Connect would eventually pull its builder’s remedy application.
Council members wanted to know whether the smaller unit count could lead to a decertification of the city’s housing element.
Swanson explained that the 64-unit proposal would be in compliance; approving it was the “fastest way to get to the end zone,” Swanson said. “They want to see units entitled.”
A different approach was taken in Yorba Linda, the north Orange County birthplace of Richard Nixon, where horseback riders can be seen on more than 100 miles of trails.
In 2024, the residents of Yorba Linda voted on zoning changes called Measure JJ before the city’s housing element was certified by the state. The city council wanted locals to embrace the overarching plan so they felt like they had a say in what was ultimately developed. At the same time, the measure, which passed with over 90 percent of the vote, let the council fulfill state requirements. The city, which did not respond to requests for comment, essentially headed off any public backlash to increased density or the possibility of a builder’s remedy project by embracing development on its own terms.
What remedy?
Not every municipality has found such a win-win-win.
Huntington Beach has fought with the state over the constitutionality of a housing element in so-called charter cities, even though the city doesn’t have a specific builder’s remedy project it’s trying to fight.
In December, the California Supreme Court refused to review a lower court decision on whether Huntington Beach’s status as a charter city offered it a loophole to bypass the need for a housing element. The decision kicked the case back to San Diego Superior Court, with a judge telling the city to have its housing element done in 120 days.
Newsom seized on the win, accusing the city of “pathetic NIMBY behavior.”
In the coastal Orange County city of Newport Beach, residents want to reduce the overall unit count of their state-approved housing element, even if it puts them out of compliance.
“We want to honor what the state is doing. We’re all pulling on the same oar, so we’re not trying to be a rogue city at all.”
The current plan requires that Newport Beach add more than 8,000 units by 2030, which the state approved in October 2022 after several rounds of edits with the housing department.
But residents cried foul over the plan, arguing it went against the voter-approved Greenlight Initiative of 2000, which requires a referendum on any major land use or zoning decision.
The issue will now go on November’s ballot as the Responsible Housing Initiative, which would reduce future housing requirements to less than 3,000 units.
It took about a week to gather enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot, said Marshall “Duffy” Duffield, a member of the Newport Beach Stewardship Association and a former Newport Beach mayor. If shopping center and other property managers had allowed signature collectors on site, he thinks it could have been done faster.
Passing the initiative would help the city avoid builder’s remedy applications, Duffield argued, though it’s unclear if the change would lead to the city falling out of compliance since it has an approved housing element. The city and HCD did not respond to an inquiry on the matter.
The initiative would give the community one thing it wants: less congestion. On a Thursday in January, Duffield was running late to his office thanks to traffic on two miles of Pacific Coast Highway. The congestion is an example of the lack of infrastructure, Duffield pointed out. With roads like this now, how could the city bring in more residents?
Still, he concedes on the larger goal.
“We want to honor what the state is doing,” Duffield said. “We’re all pulling on the same oar, so we’re not trying to be a rogue city at all.”
Avoiding the fight sounds like a smart strategy to Curtis.
“There’s been a lot of ill feelings,” Curtis said, reflecting on the past few years. “It’s been difficult but hopefully it’s making a positive dent in the housing crisis and, bottom line, the economy.”