Renting rooms in a house during rehab work

[Jeff Cliff]

Hello,

I am currently rehabbing a house in California (central coast). Majority of the house needs a lot of work and I foresee it may take 6-8 months or longer to complete the entire rehab work.

However, one part of the house on North side has 2 BRs & 1BA which could be fixed up relatively quickly. I am tempted to fix those two rooms & the bathroom in a month November/December and rent those two rooms out to university students before their spring semester starts. However, the house won’t have any functional kitchen for a while.

Is there any legal requirement to have a functional kitchen before the rooms can be rented out? If there is no such requirement, is there any downside to this plan?

Thanks in advance for your response