Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), the bill's author, framed it plainly: "A working stove and a working refrigerator are not luxuries—they are a necessary part of modern life." In an ever-evolving landscape of affordability issues, habitability, and human rights, California is finding it necessary to level the playing field. AB 628 doesn't represent a philosophical shift—it codifies what many jurisdictions already recognize: functional cooking and food storage are non-negotiable components of habitable housing, not amenities to be negotiated away or deferred.

Real estate has a lot of moving parts and one of the reasons I began to write about the process was to cement some of the basics that I learned over the years. One of the basics recently got a big update. [...]