Building limits on the number of animals
Answers
A cap is a pet rule, and a granted accommodation is an exception to pet rules.
The general position
A two-animals-per-unit rule is a pet policy. Where an accommodation is granted the animal is not being kept as a pet, so it does not consume a slot in a cap designed for pets, and a provider refusing on the cap alone has not engaged with the request.
Where a provider can still count
- Any actual pets you have. Those are pets and the cap applies to them normally.
- Occupancy or health code limits imposed by law rather than by the building, which are not pet policies.
- Undue burden, where the number of animals in a particular unit is genuinely impractical. That is a real test with evidence behind it rather than a number in a handbook.
More than one assistance animal
Possible, and each animal has to be individually justified. Documentation that names two animals and explains what each does is a real request; documentation written for one and extended to cover another is the most common reason the second is refused.
Common questions
- The building allows one animal and I have an ESA and a cat.
- The assistance animal sits outside the cap; the cat is a pet and occupies the allowance. That is usually the workable answer and it is worth proposing it yourself.