For housing providers: how to evaluate an ESA request

What you may ask

Where a disability is not obvious and not already known to you, you may generally ask for documentation establishing the disability-related need for the animal. You may confirm that the clinician is real and licensed.

What you generally may not do is demand the tenant's medical records, require a specific diagnosis, insist on your own choice of clinician, or require the animal to be certified or registered. There is no official registry to check against, so a demand to see one cannot be satisfied.

What changed in May 2026

On 22 May 2026 HUD permanently rescinded its 2020 assistance-animal guidance and narrowed FHEO enforcement to animals individually trained to perform disability-related tasks. The practical effect is that HUD is now much less likely to find reasonable cause on a complaint about an untrained emotional support animal.

Checking a letter

• Look for a named clinician with a licence number and issuing state, and check that number against the state board's public register.
• Check the clinician is licensed in the tenant's state, not merely licensed somewhere.
• Check the date. A letter more than about a year old is usually worth a refresh.
• Be wary of documents that read as certificates, registrations, or ID cards. Those are products, not clinical opinions.
• If the letter carries a verification reference, check it. On this site that is an ESA ID, checkable at /verify, which confirms the letter without disclosing any health information.

Process errors that cause complaints

• Not responding. An unanswered request is often treated as a constructive denial. Respond in writing, promptly, even if only to ask a permitted question.
• Applying a pet policy automatically. Breed, weight and species restrictions are the usual flashpoints, and applying them reflexively to an accommodation request is where disputes start.
• Charging a pet deposit or pet rent without checking your state's rules first.
• Asking for a diagnosis. You are entitled to establish need, not to obtain a clinical history.

You may still decline a request where the specific animal poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others that cannot be reduced by another reasonable accommodation, or would cause substantial physical damage. That assessment has to be about the individual animal and its actual conduct, not about the breed or about animals in general.