Emotional support animals in mobile home parks

The unusual structure

In most parks you own the home and rent the pad, so the park operator is a housing provider setting rules about your dwelling even though it does not own it. That is enough to bring the Fair Housing Act into play, and park pet rules are policies the accommodation duty applies to.

What comes up in practice

• Breed and number rules, which are pet policies and are excepted by a granted accommodation.
• Rules about animals in common areas and on other residents' lots, which are ordinary conduct rules and generally stand.
• Pet fees added to the lot rent, which raise exactly the post-2026 question every other setting raises, on top of state landlord-tenant law.
• State mobile home park statutes, which many states have and which sit alongside the general landlord-tenant law.

Eviction risk

The stakes are higher here than in an apartment, because losing the tenancy can mean moving a structure or losing it. That asymmetry is worth putting in writing when you make the request, because it goes directly to why the accommodation is necessary.

Who to make the request to

The park operator or management company, in writing, referring to the lot lease. Parks are often managed at a distance by a company that owns many of them, and a request handed to an on-site manager can sit unactioned for weeks without reaching anybody who can decide it. Ask who the decision maker is and send it to them directly.

Age-restricted parks

Many parks are lawfully fifty-five and over. That restriction is about age and does not remove the disability accommodation duty, which is a separate protection in the same statute. An operator treating an age-restricted park as exempt from the animal question has confused two different provisions.