A candidate who ran for mayor of the largest city in America told residents he was going to freeze rents. This is in a city where landlords had already pulled more than 50,000 apartments off the market because it did not make economic sense to rent them. New York isn’t the only place that has overlords making decisions making it economically challenging to rent apartments. California is in a race to the bottom on that issue.
The elected leaders – most of whom have never run a business and certainly never been landlords — have decided to tell people, many who have invested a large portion of their life’s savings into apartment buildings, how to run their businesses and secure the value of their investments. They always have another rule that is making it more challenging and more costly to operate.
California enacted an ordinance (Assembly Bill 628) that states as of January 1, 2026, landlords must provide a refrigerator and a cooking stove or range for any lease created after that date. It makes clear neither microwaves nor hot plates will substitute for the stove/range requirement. Once installed these pieces of equipment must be maintained by the owner of the apartment unless damage is caused by tenant misuse. Try proving that.
These requirements placed into law are despite the fact that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requirements for Section 8 housing vouchers state on their checklist that the apartment must have a stove/range and a refrigerator along with hot/cold running water in the kitchen. The feds do their requirements by positive encouragement. You want the government’s money then you must have these things. California enforces their requirements by hitting people with a sledgehammer and threats/coercion.
This forces landlords to change their leases for this new mandate and update their agreements with property management companies to comply with the mandate. The more onerous and nebulous aspect is the building owners must track the appliances’ condition to protect against claims.
I am not aware of many apartments that do not provide a stove, but there are apartment owners who have a strategy of renting units for a lower price, not being eligible for federal housing vouchers, and not supplying a refrigerator. That choice is now gone. Those owners must now acquire refrigerators, have them delivered and installed, and ensure their operation in perpetuity. That is completely the burden of the owner with no ability to recoup the cost with increased revenue because of the strict rent control in most locales.
That is just one of the new mandates. The city of Los Angeles — flat broke and with a billion-dollar deficit — enacted a new ordinance regarding tenant notification of the city supplying free legal aid. There are few businesses required to notify customers that you can sue us, and it has no cost to you because the government will cover the cost. The ordinance states legal aid is only available to people who income qualify but review the income qualifications and one might think that there is no preclusion to receiving free legal aid. Then there is the supposition that a city attorney will even enforce the earnings limitation as it assures the attorney of job security.
The owner must post the ordinance in their building, provide a notice to right to counsel at the beginning of the tenancy, attach a copy of the notice to any eviction paperwork, and attach the notice to any other change in the rental situation even if the change has nothing to do with the owner.
How could this go wrong? You must tell someone with whom you are doing business they can sue you and they have no out-of-pocket costs. But you (the owner) must have an attorney on retainer just to operate your eight-unit apartment building that you once hoped was a strong financial investment.
That is not the end of the dictums issued by local officials. The five “mini-Caesars” on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors issued their own new rule. They require that rental housing units maintain a maximum indoor temperature of 82 degrees Fahrenheit in all habitable rooms. This starts with requiring just a room by January 1, 2027, and extends to all rooms by January 1, 2032.
How does someone comply with this? If you don’t already have central air conditioning, the move would be to add a wall/window unit. That could cool the living areas very well, but not the bedrooms. Then you could be in violation of the rules. You could put an air conditioning unit on a rolling cart, but then there would have be challenges with electricity because the AC unit would have to be able to draw electricity from every room in the house without blowing the fuses.
Who dreams up these rules? Can’t the tenants just buy some fans if they don’t have air conditioning? Who is measuring the room temperature? How long must it be at the level of 82 degrees to qualify as a violation? One hour, five hours, or five minutes? This seems like just another way to churn up legal disputes against owners. This is for the incorporated areas of the County, but you can place money on the fact cities within the County will start adopting matching ordinances.
We can be confident not one of the people involved in any of these laws being established owns a rental unit. You can bet that when they next run for office they will complain about affordability, the hot new topic. They will point at others and take no responsibility themselves. They will point their finger at the evil landlords. Then they will ask why there are so many rental units that have disappeared from the market.
