Determination of Application Completeness — Housing Accountability Act Technical Assistance Advisory

Government Code, § 65589.5, subdivisions (d)(5), (h)(5) and (9), and (j)(1).

The process of submitting an application for a housing development project can be iterative. For example, applications that are missing information cannot be fully evaluated by a local government for compliance with local objective standards. Therefore, an application is not typically processed until it is “determined to be complete”. The HAA currently uses two terms related to completeness, “deemed complete” and “determined to be complete.”

Deemed Complete : For the purposes of the HAA, until January 1, 2025, “deemed complete” means the date on which a preliminary application was submitted under the provisions of Government Code section 65941.1. Submittal of a preliminary application allows a developer to provide a specific subset of information on the proposed housing development before providing the full information required by the local government for a housing development application. Submittal of this information allows a housing developer to “freeze” the applicable standards for their project while they assemble the rest of the material necessary for a full application submittal. This ensures development requirements do not change during this time, potentially adding costs to a project. No affirmative determination by a local government regarding the completeness of a preliminary application is required. (See Appendix C).

The term “deemed complete” triggers the “freeze date” for applicable development standards, criteria, or condition that can be applied to a project. Changes to the zoning ordinance, general plan land use designation, standards, and criteria, subdivision ordinance, and design review standards, made subsequent to the date the housing development project preliminary application was "deemed complete", cannot be applied to a housing development project or used to disapprove or condition approval of the project.

However, if the developer does not submit a preliminary application, the standards that must be applied are those that are in effect when the project is determined to be complete under the Permit Streamlining Act (Gov. Code § 65943).

Determined to be complete : Until January 1, 2025, the full application is "determined to be complete" when it is found to be complete under the Permit Streamlining Act (Gov. Code § 65943). This phrase triggers the timing provisions for the local government to provide written documentation of inconsistency with any applicable plan, program, policy, ordinance, standard, requirement, or other similar provision (see page 10 below for inconsistency determinations).