Last March, CalHDF won our lawsuit seeking to overturn the denial of a builder’s remedy project in La Cañada Flintridge. The project will be the first multifamily development in the City in decades. The 16 new low-income homes would be the first deed restricted affordable housing ever to be developed in the City. CalHDF sued the City back in 2023 after the City denied the proposed development by refusing to process it as a builder’s remedy project. The “builder’s remedy” allows proposed housing developments to exceed local zoning limits when a city fails to enact a compliant housing element. After two years of litigation, the City dropped its appeal and agreed to process the development permit application. Last week, CalHDF came to an agreement with the City last week to settle our fee claim related to the lawsuit. The City agreed to pay $1,262,500 to CalHDF and our outside counsel on the case, Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP. The amount would compensate CalHDF for hours spent working on the case by in-house lawyers, and to compensate RBGG for their time spent on the case.
As a housing organization, CalHDF is entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees when we prevail in court seeking to overturn a city’s denial of housing. This money helps fund out organization and allows us to bring other lawsuits against cities who deny housing. As always, we encourage cities like La Cañada Flintridge to avoid wasting their taxpayer’s money by warning them of potential violations ahead of time. In this case, we sent the City multiple letters warning them not to disapprove of the development in question, but the City disregarded our warnings.
CalHDF will continue to monitor the City’s processing of the development entitlement application in the coming months.The court’s judgement requires the city to swiftly review the development application, so that the groundbreaking development can become a reality and provide new, desperately needed homes.
While legal victories like this one are important for our organization, we continue to rely on your generous donations to ensure that state housing laws are implemented by local governments across California, and lead to the creation of new homes where we need them the most.
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