By Nadia Lathan © calmatters.org
It might be hard to fathom for residents of Santa Cruz County residents, but a law was apparently needed to require apartment rentals in California to have refrigerators.
Since Jan. 1, landlords have been required to provide all apartments with a working stove and refrigerator thanks to the new state law. It marks the end of an unusual, decades-long phenomenon where some tenants have had to buy their own appliances after signing a lease.
The law, Assembly Bill 628, is one of the numerous housing reform measures passed by the Legislature in 2025, and is one of the more unusual ones.
“A working stove and a refrigerator are not luxuries,” Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood, said in a statement earlier this year after she introduced the bill. “They are a necessary part of modern life.”
California has the fewest available apartments with refrigerators in the country, according to a 2022 report from the Los Angeles Times that was cited in the bill proposal.
There is not a clear reason why, and the mysterious trend is largely region-locked to Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Most tenants don’t have to buy their own bulky appliances. But California law previously required only plumbing, heat and certain other utilities be available.
Apartments without the staple appliances will now be illegal unless they are part of housing with communal kitchens, single-room occupancy units or hotels.
Tenant rights groups say the law will help reduce housing costs for low-income residents who have to pay for a refrigerator — which can easily run in the hundreds of dollars — in addition to the first month’s rent and a deposit before moving in.
“To have an added cost of trying to buy a refrigerator and a stove is really economically unfeasible for many tenants,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Los Angeles housing advocacy group Coalition for Economic Survival.
Realtor groups have said it will spur burdensome litigation for mom-and-pop landlords.
The requirement “will lead to heavier burdens on the courts and a dramatic reduction in the state’s availability of rental housing supply,” Bernice Creager, a lobbyist for the California Association of Realtors, said at a Senate judiciary committee hearing last year.
Enforcement will be up to local governments. In Los Angeles, residents will be able to file a complaint with the city’s housing department if a landlord refuses to provide cooking and refrigerated storage appliances.
Tenants can still bring their own refrigerator and stove if they please, but they will be on the hook for maintenance if they do.