Episode 21: Landlords: Animals Part 2 - Service vs Emotional Support Animals
Summary
In today's episode, we explore part 2 of the 3 part series on animals. Animals are a white hot subject for landlords, and let's explore the non-pet animals in a tenant's life. Namely, the differences between service animals, emotional support animals, why they are different and what a landlord can (and can't) do regarding these non-pets.
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Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to My Life as a Landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If
you're looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the
right show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Hello. Hello. Welcome to my life as a landlord. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am your host, Dr.
Jen, your rental coach and your landlord guru. Today's episode is Landlord perspective. And this is the
second episode in a three part series all about animals. And today's episode is a white hot topic. White
hot, all about service animals versus emotional support animals. Now, to all my Canadian listeners out
there, I'm going to apologize in advance. Today's episode is more us. Oriented than Canadian oriented. I
did research in the US. About service animals and the emotional support animals. The Canadian
documents are very similar. I think the US. Documents are a little more stringent, which is why I went
more with the US. Based ones. So when I talk about the documents, those are US. Based documents. 1s
But as in a subject that is as white hot as this one is today, I think you'll understand the perspective as we
move forward. Now, the last landlord episode we did was all about pets. So just a reminder, a pet is
defined as a domesticated tamed, nonaggressive animal that a tenant declares, and that animal lives in
and around the home for companionship or for pleasure. So that's a pet, right? So let's talk about what a
service animal is and then we'll talk about what an emotional support animal is. That's what today's
episode is all about. And we'll talk about why it is so white hot. All right, so service animal. Service
animal is defined under American Disabilities Act that it's a dog that has been individually trained to
work and perform tasks for an individual with a certain disability. And the tasks performed by the dog
must be directly related to the person's disability. Now, let's be clear. A service animal is not a pet. It's
not a pet. Service animal is part of the solution for this person's disability. So an example of a service
animal seeing eye dog, hearing assist dog, diabetes alert dog, when somebody's got low blood sugar.
There are dogs that have been trained to alert their owners that they're about basically about to pass out.
Seizure warning dogs, depression dogs. These are dogs that have been specifically trained. For a
specific disability. Now, the American Disabilities Act does distinguish because there is such a thing as a
psychiatric service animal, which is different than an emotional support animal. So a psychiatric service
animal is a trained animal, but it's a really interesting line. There's some gray lines here as we go through
this, and you'll see this here in minute. By the way, the definition for the service animals I found from the
Department of justice, united States Department of justice, and you can find serviceanimal at Ada Gov. If
you want to read some of the definitions, the examples that I'm reading from, you can see exactly from
that. And so this is a service animal, so it must be a dog. They don't say what type of breed the dog must
be, but you can't have a service service squirrel, you can't have a service peacock. This has got to be a
service dog. They're saying it's a specially trained dog, okay, but the dog is not a pet. Today's episode
is all from the perspective of the landlord. If someone says I have a service dog, you can't say well, this is
a no pet house, this is a no pet rental. Remember, a service animal is not a pet. We'll get into this on why
this is such a touchy subject. So but before we do that, let's go into emotional support animal. Let's
talk about an emotional support animal. Also not a pet, but is defined as either a cat or a dog. But it's up
for interpretation, which is interesting. Up for interpretation. Cat or dog provide emotional support or
comfort which does not directly relate to a disability for someone that someone may or may not have.
And for an emotional support animal there is no special training. There's no special anything. A service
animal is specially trained for a disability to assist the owner in a disability. Emotional support animal,
there's no training. Now, interesting enough, neither service animals nor emotional support animals have
to have vests or collars or leashes or cards. They don't have to have any of this. It's really interesting to
look at this because if you see someone that's got emotional support or sorry, either a service animal or
emotional support animal, often you will see that they've got a vest on, they've got all these official
sticker things on and. For a landlord, that is not required. And this is where it can get really it can get
really touchy. You might be saying, okay, if I have a no pet policy, what can I say if somebody says I
have a service animal? Okay, well, first of all, is that service animal a dog? Okay. Yes. Okay, is the dog a
service animal required because of a disability that you can ask the tenant. Now you cannot ask the
tenant, what is your disability? You can't say that legally, you cannot ask somebody what their disability
is, but what you can say is the service animal required because of a disability? That one they can answer.
The other one is what work or task has the dog been trained to perform? And you can say, this person or
this dog has been trained to help me alert for seizures. It seems in these conversations that the person's
disability is going to come out anyway. Maybe not, obviously, but you cannot outright ask them for what
their disability is. But in all of these conversations, the service animal is not a pet. Emotional support
animal, also not a pet. Now, there's some other things that we need to talk about. The service animal, let's
jump back to the service animal. Does not have to be professionally trained. They don't need a vest,
they don't need an ID, but they must be controlled by the owner, right? This cannot be a dog that goes 1s
hyper and gets the Zumies and runs all over. If that's a service animal that you cannot control and it
cannot do its task because it can't control its behavior, your that's a little bit different. I know some
breeds can get hyper, that's a little different as well. But a service animal does not have to be
professionally trained by a certain service. Now there are places that do do service animal training and I
don't want to discount that. But for a service animal to be a service animal, they don't have to be
professionally trained. Again. This is all from the US. Department of justice. Ada gov. But one thing that
has to happen with a service animal and an emotional support animal these animals must be calm. They
must not be aggressive. They can't bark or charge, they can't charge people. They can't be aggressive in
any way. And as a landlord you cannot charge a pet deposit. Remember these are not pets. As a landlord,
if there's an issue with the behavior of the service animal or the emotional support animal, let's say
they're charging another dog or they're not under the control of the owner, let's say they just open the
front door and they go running. Then the landlord can issue a letter of warning because you are
interrupting others quiet enjoyment. Right now we're talking about other tenants around them, other
owners around them. Now this is a white hot topic mainly because you've got no pet policies in these
rentals and there is a great deal of misunderstanding or better yet miseducation on the landlord side of.
Well, I have a notepad policy. So you can't have a dog or you can't have an emotional support cat. Where
it gets a little touchy is when you go through the entire tenant screening process 1s and the tenant has not
declared any of this. And then at the last minute, maybe you already have a lease signed. And at the last
minute they say, oh, by the way, I have an emotional support animal. Here's my here's my doctor's letter,
right? And then the landlord is completely off guard. It can be a little bit shady on the tenant's part,
because you're supposed to declare all of that right through the tenant application process, qualification
process. The tenant should be declaring this. They should be talking about this. Now, had the tenant in
this scenario that I'm just talking about, declared an emotional support animal, service animal, the
landlord cannot deny them because they have these animals, even if they have a no pet policy.
Remember, these are not pets. These are service and emotional support animals. So it's a little bit difficult
when you're talking about. You're talking about disabilities that these service animals are serving. One
of the questions that I had pre COVID on Maui, the Fair Housing Office, which is federal, and that's all a
part of the American Disabilities Act, they had talked about they have done pre COVID, an annual
lecture, like a day of lecture, of exactly what are the Fair screening ways you cannot discriminate. This
is all about Fair housing. And they talk about this. They talk about service animals. They talk about
emotional support animals. They discuss reasonable accommodation, which was a topic that we'll discuss
in future podcasts. And one of the interesting things that they had said during these pre COVID lectures
was that you potentially, as a landlord, you can ask for verification 1s from the doctor that you need the
service animal. Now, I did not find that in the Department of justice website. Ada Gov I did not find that.
And I found that very interesting because I look back at my notes 2019, where this is something that
they're saying here in Hawaii, that you can ask this of a potential tenant. But that's not what the
website is saying. So it's a little bit interesting now because I knew I was going to give this podcast.
Many of you know that I've got a golden retriever, German shepherd dog. Twelve years old. His name is
Mack. He's a love, but he is also a crazy guy. When you see a cat or a mongoose or another dog, quite
frankly, he can go a little bit crazy. And so I thought, you know, there's place is that you can go on
website 1s to get an emotional support animal letter. And I went, okay, let's just see how this goes. I'm
going to try this. I'm just going to pull it that thread and see how it went. So I went to one of the websites
and it's not hard to find them. And sure enough, Mac qualifies as an emotional support animal. I paid my,
whatever it was $100 for the letter. I could have paid a little bit more for a psychiatric service animal,
which I thought was even more interesting that I could buy this off the internet. But I was really
concerned because if Mac is an emotional support animal, there's discussion about us taking Mac to the
mainland and from Hawaii, which means I have to fly him. And I thought, okay, well, if emotional
support animal, he's 80 pounds. He's a big guy. He's not just a little poodle, little 20 pound poodle. He's a
big guy. So when I brought him to Hawaii, I had to put him in cargo in an extra large animal carrier. And
it cost quite a lot of money to get him to Hawaii. And it was also part of the state quarantine. That's a
whole nother aspect of it. But I thought, okay, if I do an emotional support animal for Mac, first of all, I
want to experience what it looks like going through this, right? I want to see what it takes to actually get
this letter. Is this legit? Okay, I did get it from a doctor. I don't know who the doctor is. They're based in
Hawaii that says yes, jen has comfort when Mac is around, which is the whole definition of what an
emotional support animal is. Mac is not specially trained. I don't have a disability that he provides service
for me. So he's not a service animal even though he has a dog, but he is an emotional support animal. So I
went on to the airlines website to say, can Mac ride in the cabin with me and Mike if we fly to the
mainland because he's an emotional support animal? I mean, I didn't know. So I wanted to try this out
and the answer is no. And I found this really interesting. Again, going to Department of Justice.
Gov looking at the American Disabilities Act, there has been a ruling, department of Transportation has
had a ruling that for airlines, for airlines they consider emotional support animals and their lack of
service with no apparent disability, they view them as pets on the airline. So if Mac was a service animal,
if he was specially trained for some disability I had, that would be different. He could potentially ride in
the cabin and I'm assuming they would allow that because what I found on the Department of
Transportation website was all about emotionally support animals being viewed as pets. So there's the
answer is that even if you have an emotional support animal transporting back and forth now, as a
landlord, does that impact you? No. But I thought it was an interesting spin that it depends on the context
that one federal agency can say an emotional support animal is not a pet is required. You cannot deny
a tenant because they have an emotional support animal. Yet airlines can deny treating them as service
animals because they can treat them like a pet even though they're emotional support animals. Thought it
was really interesting and a bit convenient that you've got different federal agencies that are conflicting
with each other. I've never seen that before. And again, I learned all this because I wanted to see as a
landlord, knowing I was going to do this. Podcast service animals versus emotional support. Animals. 1s
How does this actually work? And so on the landlord side, you can't deny the animal because they're not
a pet, but on the tenant side, you've got to be forthcoming. There's got to be some open communication
here. And one of the reasons why this topic is so white hot is because there is lack of education, probably
on both sides, but then there's lack of vacation as well for both a tenant and the landlord. And so you've
got these people that are saying, no, my unit is non pet friendly. I don't want pets in there. Well, that's
fine. Unfortunately, denying someone because they have a service animal or an emotional support animal
is against American Disabilities Act. And that can open up a whole can of worms that you probably don't
want to open as a landlord. Same thing as a tenant. If you're just going to go online and pay your $100 so
that you can have your cat or your dog as an emotional support animal just to get under the radar.
Landlords are not allowed to charge you a pet deposit on an emotional support animal. So the landlord
feels slighted because, again, it's a very interesting time right now. Lots and lots on social media about
service animals and emotional support animals. I hope I've educated, hated you a bit, but here's your call
to action as a landlord. At some point, somebody is going to apply for one of your units. 1s With either a
service animal or an emotional support animal, it's going to happen. It's happened to me many times. You
need to be prepared to help qualify them with their animal just as you would any other tenant. You
cannot discriminate them and you cannot deny them because they have these animals. So you, as a
landlord, you need to help educate yourself on what is your actual protocol for qualifying these tenants.
Now, honestly, these animals should not impact their application, their tenancy application, that you
should be able to qualify them on their own. And if you deny them, that's going to be a problem. But
moreover, your call to action as a landlord is what do you say? What are the words that you use? What is
the script that you use stating this? And when you're talking with them saying your emotional support
animal? There's no pet deposit. And honestly, the answer is the script should be exactly the same.
Whether they have an emotional support or a service animal or if they don't, it's very interesting, but you
got to think about that as a landlord. This will very likely happen to you if you're a landlord long enough.
My goodness. Thank you so much for listening to this. This is such a white hot topic. I guarantee you
we're going to be talking more about this next episode. Episode 22 as a Tenant. Renting versus
owning, renting versus owning what is the goods, the bads and the whole bugs of renting versus owning.
We'll see you then.
Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and all the
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Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury, in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see you next time.