Law Requires California Landlords to Provide Refrigerators

California renters moving into a new apartment no longer have to worry if they’ll have a place to store their food.

Starting next year, apartment landlords across the state will be required to provide rental units with a refrigerator and a stove that are in good working condition, the Los Angeles Times reported. The mandate comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 628 into law last week.

The legislation goes beyond apartments and affects single family rentals as well, if they’re owned by corporations, real estate investment trusts or limited liability companies.

Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, whose district spans from Venice to Hawthorne, authored the bill. McKinnor created the legislation after realizing that refrigerators and stoves were legally labeled as amenities.

The average rent in Los Angeles is nearly $2,800 a month, nearly $700 higher than the national average, according to Zillow. San Francisco has some of the highest residential rents in the country, averaging almost $3,700 a month.

A 2022 Los Angeles Times investigation found that California had more apartments without refrigerators on the market than any other state. Landlords were only required to maintain some “standard characteristics” for a residential unit, including hot and cold running water, heat and weather proofing. McKinnor advocated to include a fridge and stove as similar necessities for a rental unit to be considered habitable.

“A working stove and a working refrigerator are not luxuries. They are a necessary part of modern life,” McKinnor said in a statement prior to Newsom’s signature. “By making these necessary appliances standard in rental homes, California can provide all of its residents with a safer, more affordable and more dignified place to call home.”

Landlords looking to skip out on providing these appliances only have another two and a half months to do so. The law requiring them to provide a stove capable of generating heat for cooking and a refrigerator capable of safely storing food for new leases goes into effect Jan. 1.

— Chris Malone Méndez