STATUS: Petition filed on April 8, 2025

We, alongside the California Housing Defense Fund, and the two developers who had their projects blocked, sued the city of Cupertino on April 8, 2025 for failing to process two project applications that are protected by the vesting rights of the Permit Streamlining Act, as amended by the Housing Crisis Act of 2019.

Cupertino is trying to stop two builders remedy projects by saying that after receiving an incompleteness letter from the city, a developer only has one 90-day window to respond to the city’s incompleteness. In other words, the city wants to be able to ask for an unlimited number of updates and changes, all of which have to be submitted to the city within 90 days of the city's first request for more information. Yes, this would allow a city to ask for more work, such as a change to a big study hours before the end of the 90 day period. It's absurd.

In the case of these two Builder’s Remedy projects, the city argues that the developments have lost their eligibility to be approved under the Builder’s Remedy. The city is clearly in the wrong about this: in February, 2025, HCD issued guidance to Los Gatos explaining that their similar interpretation of the Permit Streamlining Act is wrong. This interpretation has also already been upheld by a prior trial court decision in Los Angeles over a Builder’s Remedy project there (Janet Jha v. City of Los Angeles). HCD also issued two Notices of Violation to Beverly Hills over this very issue in 2024: in August and again in December.

The tactic that cities like Cupertino, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Los Gatos, and Sunnyvale have taken to misread the requirements of the Permit Streamlining Act is especially insidious because the cities have the sole discretion to decide whether or not an application is complete, and do not always clearly articulate why an application is incomplete or how to correct an application to make it complete. These cities are essentially abusing the law in order to kill projects that they don’t like by making up reasons to find applications deficient, in an attempt to avoid liability for disapproving a project.

This stratagem could be used to strip all kinds of projects of vesting if it's successful here in Cupertino. That’s why YIMBY Law has filed suit to ensure that Cupertino follows the law and doesn’t undermine the intent of pro-housing legislation like the Housing Crisis Act of 2019.