Landlord forms and HUD templates
Answers
No official federal form exists, which surprises both sides of this conversation.
There is no HUD form
People ask for one constantly and it does not exist. HUD has never published a mandatory assistance animal documentation form, and nothing requires documentation to be on any particular template. A provider who says they need the HUD form is describing something that was never issued.
A landlord may offer their own
And most tenants should simply use it, because it is the path of least resistance and it tells the provider exactly what they wanted to know. What a provider cannot do is refuse otherwise adequate documentation purely because it arrived in a different format.
When their form asks too much
Many templates ask for the diagnosis, the treatment history, or authorisation to speak to your clinician about your condition. You can decline those fields and supply the rest. A form cannot expand what a provider is entitled to, which is that a disability exists and that the animal is needed because of it.
How to handle it
- Complete the parts that ask for the two facts and the licence details.
- Leave clinical fields blank, and say in the covering email that you are providing the information a housing provider is entitled to.
- If your clinician has already written a letter, send that alongside rather than instead.
- Keep a copy of what you sent, and the date.
Common questions
- They say the form is required by law.
- It is not. No federal or state law requires a particular form, and asking which law they mean usually ends the conversation.