diff --git a/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/admission.go b/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/admission.go
index 25c266479db..cbb339411ce 100644
--- a/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/admission.go
+++ b/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/admission.go
@@ -114,7 +114,9 @@ func (a *QuotaAdmission) SetExternalKubeClientSet(client kubernetes.Interface) {
 
 // SetExternalKubeInformerFactory registers an informer factory into QuotaAdmission
 func (a *QuotaAdmission) SetExternalKubeInformerFactory(f informers.SharedInformerFactory) {
-	a.quotaAccessor.lister = f.Core().V1().ResourceQuotas().Lister()
+	quotas := f.Core().V1().ResourceQuotas()
+	a.quotaAccessor.lister = quotas.Lister()
+	a.quotaAccessor.hasSynced = quotas.Informer().HasSynced
 }
 
 // SetQuotaConfiguration assigns and initializes configuration and evaluator for QuotaAdmission
@@ -144,6 +146,9 @@ func (a *QuotaAdmission) ValidateInitialization() error {
 	if a.quotaAccessor.lister == nil {
 		return fmt.Errorf("missing quotaAccessor.lister")
 	}
+	if a.quotaAccessor.hasSynced == nil {
+		return fmt.Errorf("missing quotaAccessor.hasSynced")
+	}
 	if a.quotaConfiguration == nil {
 		return fmt.Errorf("missing quotaConfiguration")
 	}
diff --git a/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access.go b/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access.go
index d189446f032..fd4c102e6d5 100644
--- a/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access.go
+++ b/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access.go
@@ -48,6 +48,9 @@ type quotaAccessor struct {
 	// lister can list/get quota objects from a shared informer's cache
 	lister corev1listers.ResourceQuotaLister
 
+	// hasSynced indicates whether the lister has completed its initial sync
+	hasSynced func() bool
+
 	// liveLookups holds the last few live lookups we've done to help ammortize cost on repeated lookup failures.
 	// This lets us handle the case of latent caches, by looking up actual results for a namespace on cache miss/no results.
 	// We track the lookup result here so that for repeated requests, we don't look it up very often.
@@ -112,8 +115,8 @@ func (e *quotaAccessor) GetQuotas(namespace string) ([]corev1.ResourceQuota, err
 		return nil, fmt.Errorf("error resolving quota: %v", err)
 	}
 
-	// if there are no items held in our indexer, check our live-lookup LRU, if that misses, do the live lookup to prime it.
-	if len(items) == 0 {
+	// if there are no items held in our unsynced lister, check our live-lookup LRU, if that misses, do the live lookup to prime it.
+	if len(items) == 0 && !e.hasSynced() {
 		lruItemObj, ok := e.liveLookupCache.Get(namespace)
 		if !ok || lruItemObj.(liveLookupEntry).expiry.Before(time.Now()) {
 			// use singleflight.Group to avoid flooding the apiserver with repeated
diff --git a/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access_test.go b/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access_test.go
index 9bd035a8028..f9383313459 100644
--- a/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access_test.go
+++ b/staging/src/k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/admission/plugin/resourcequota/resource_access_test.go
@@ -97,6 +97,7 @@ func TestLRUCacheLookup(t *testing.T) {
 			accessor, _ := newQuotaAccessor()
 			accessor.client = kubeClient
 			accessor.lister = informerFactory.Core().V1().ResourceQuotas().Lister()
+			accessor.hasSynced = func() bool { return false }
 			accessor.liveLookupCache = liveLookupCache
 
 			for _, q := range tc.cacheInput {
@@ -151,6 +152,7 @@ func TestGetQuotas(t *testing.T) {
 	accessor, _ := newQuotaAccessor()
 	accessor.client = kubeClient
 	accessor.lister = informerFactory.Core().V1().ResourceQuotas().Lister()
+	accessor.hasSynced = func() bool { return false }
 
 	kubeClient.AddReactor("list", "resourcequotas", func(action core.Action) (bool, runtime.Object, error) {
 		switch action.GetNamespace() {