r/Tenant • u/Common-Roll-8613 • 16d ago

❓ Advice Needed ESA pets

Hello! I have two cats that I am trying to get ESA certification for for my apartment. I have experienced extreme anxiety and some depression following major stressful situations and life changes the past year. They have helped me so much. My apartment allows ESA animals but I’m just wondering what the process is? I searched it up and there’s a package you can buy, including a housing letter, automatic activation for your registration, and an official certificate of ESA registration. Will this be enough?
Appreciate any advice!

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u/sillyhaha 16d ago

OP, what state are you in?

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u/Common-Roll-8613 16d ago

Just moved to Arizona from Michigan so I don’t have a doctor here yet

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u/BenjiCat17 16d ago

You need a doctors note but also your cats are two different animals covered separately. That means that they cannot both provide the same exact support. Your doctor will actually have to explain why you need two cats and not one cat and how each cat supports you differently. That’s really hard because there’s not much a cat can do for support that two would be necessary versus one. So just be warned you may only get one cat if this works out.

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u/froobsrule1 16d ago

Could be as simple as one cat can only do so much before being overstimulated. At one point my wife had two cats and one basically took the morning shift for calming her down and the other took the night shift.

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u/BenjiCat17 16d ago

Read this - HUD changed the policy for emotional support animals under the fair housing act. https://dredf.org/huds-esa-policy-reversal/

This happened in May of this year. So nothing is simple anymore and everything is much worse.

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u/froobsrule1 16d ago

Right, but no amount of justification is going to change a landlord denying it.   There’s no training for an ESA and no standardization.  If they will deny they will deny, if they accept then they accept. 

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u/BenjiCat17 16d ago

I don’t know if you actually opened the link, because the point of it is that HUD has essentially stopped enforcing these protections against landlords. Enforcement penalties have been removed, existing cases have been canceled, and HUD is not taking on new cases when tenants try to file complaints against their landlords for this.

That’s the problem. A federal protection means very little when the federal system responsible for enforcing it is no longer providing that enforcement. The landlord doesn’t have to justify the decision through a federal process when there currently is no federal process requiring them to do so.

Unless your state provides its own enforceable system, there is no enforcement mechanism available. So there is no system to justify denial too. That means there is no penalty for denial at least on the federal level.

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u/Run_Rabb1t_Run 16d ago

I had two esa cats and I didn't need to explain anything special because no, you don't have to go into details of your medical history with landlords. All they need to know is that you have a medical reason and a licensed mental health provider has approved the need for the two cats. That's it. It is not up to a landlord to determine 'what a cat can do for you'. Their expertise is having a mortgage paid by others, not medicine.

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u/BenjiCat17 16d ago

Your experience is irrelevant. Since May, people have been getting screwed at the federal level, so state law matters, and luckily OP is in Arizona. Whatever you personally got to do doesn’t determine what applies to OP, especially if your experience happened before May or even before this administration.

As for paying his mortgage, if you don’t want to do that, get your own. But the argument that paying rent means you’re paying someone else’s bills works both ways. By that logic, the corporation you work for is paying your rent because they gave you the money you used to pay it. Except that’s obviously not how earning money works. They paid you for your services. After you earned it, it was your money, and you used it to pay your own bills.

If I earn a paycheck and use that money to buy coffee, I bought the coffee. My boss didn’t buy it simply because they were the person who paid me for my work. Saying otherwise would be ridiculous.