Applicant did not disclose their emotional dog
Member since 2019 · 2 posts · 0 votes
I guess my situation is a little unusual - I have a potential tenant who has filled out applications but did not disclose they have an emotional support dog until we mentioned there will be a pet deposit since there will be a dog living on the property as well. I am okay with the pet situation but I feel it's a bit odd they told us the dog is emotional support right after my property manager let them know about the pet deposit instead of just being upfront about it. I don't feel comfortable with the situation, and I think this is dishonest. Can I deny the applicant at this point? I would appreciate any advise, thank you.
I guess my situation is a little unusual - I have a potential tenant who has filled out applications but did not disclose they have an emotional support dog until we mentioned there will be a pet deposit since there will be a dog living on the property as well. I am okay with the pet situation but I feel it's a bit odd they told us the dog is emotional support right after my property manager let them know about the pet deposit instead of just being upfront about it. I don't feel comfortable with the situation, and I think this is dishonest. Can I deny the applicant at this point? I would appreciate any advise, thank you.
I was at a seminar and the word was that "emotional support" animals is a made up term. There are "Service Animals" used for blind, and other legitimate needs.
It's a scam and I wouldn't rent to them since they tried to hide their intent (to avoid paying a fee or deposit). Who knows what other trick they will try in the future.
https://adata.org/publication/service-animals-book...
II. Service Animal Defined by Title II and Title III of the ADAA service animal means any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. Tasks performed can include, among other things, pulling a wheelchair, retrieving dropped items, alerting a person to a sound, reminding a person to take medication, or pressing an elevator button.
Emotional support animals, comfort animals, and therapy dogs are not service animals under Title II and Title III of the ADA.
For rental properties, ADA does not apply. ADA is more about public places like restaurants, libraries, clubs, schools etc...
The relevant federal regulations is HUD's Fair Housing Act, and Emotional Support Animals are covered and protected under that. If you reject ESA, you will violate FHA.
As far as I can tell there are four classifications.
Service Animals - those are trained animals that provides a specific need to their owners such as seeing eye dogs, medical alerts etc...there are online companies that one can order a vest for $20 and people put on their dogs to disguise them as SAs, when they are not. You cannot deny someone with an SA.
Emotional Support Amimals - any animals that is prescribed by a LMHP to ease anxiety of it's owner. Many online web sites will provide a letter of certification for a fee so this is a very easy vehicle for someone to get their pets certified as ESAs to be able to fly with their pets and to be able to move into no pet rentals. A significant number of those are scams but the problem is it's very difficult to prove it's a scam.
Therapy dogs - those are dogs trained to comfort elderly or terminally ill people at hospices, hospital, nursing homes, those are not specifically linked to an owner and are not protected by reasonable accommodation.
Working dogs - those are police K9, trained to sniff bombs, track and retrieve, guard etc...and also are not protected by reasonable accommodation.
Technically, IMO, you can't say they lied by not disclosing their pet or dog because they can say they don't think of it as a pet or regular dog, it's an ESA. You should have had an application that ask if they have any animals, not pets. You also should have something in the lease that require your approval if they have to move any animal in. In the case of a SA or ESA, you as the landlord has the right to verify the SA or ESA, by request to see documentation and call to verify with the provider to make sure the certification is legit, valid, active and current, and wellness documentation that the animal is in good health, free of parasite, flea, ticks, vaccinated etc...
In the world of being sued for saying the wrong thing to a tenant. A friend of mine was renting a small efficiency apartment. An applicant asked about it and she said it really is not big enough for you and two kids. That cost my friend 10k in fines. It was a gov't employee trying to find landlords breaking the law.
I think I have taken calls from someone who was looking to get me in trouble as well. Once I had someone who said "just between you and me are their black tenants in this building? I am just a tiny white girl and I need to feel safe" I replied "I rent to all races no preferential treatment if you have special requirement you should not apply here". Not sure if she is a mystery shopper or not.
I know down here a landlord has gotten in trouble for advertising "close to house of worship" as showing preferences to certain religious groups. That LA case where a landlord being penalized for not wanting to rent to someone who doesn't speak English as ethnic and country of origin biased. Can't be too careful.
Some landlords do say stupid things which is why when you have a applicant claiming a ESA you do not ever make a issue of it. We also have human rights police here in Canada calling landlords to catch them up. As with your fair housing police they act on complaints and do random checks. Contrary to what some may think our human rights codes regarding animals and housing rights are the same and even more restrictive than your fair housing laws in the US.
When landlords choose to operate their business based on fear, which seems to be the predominant issue with ESA, so be it however I prefer to follow and use the law to my advantage and have never had to rent to anyone claiming ESA or a service animal. When you actually understand the laws and codes operation of your business becomes safer and easier to operate. Unfortunately most choose to operate their business with blissful ignorance allowing government to control their business decisions.
Aside from states that require you to rent to the first qualified applicant (which also has go around tactics) there is no law preventing a landlord from choosing the most qualified. Service or ESA animals never take priority over most qualified. They simply should not be a issue for professional landlords. For amateur landlords however every fair housing code is a potential mine field. Beware or get out of the business.
Some landlords do say stupid things which is why when you have a applicant claiming a ESA you do not ever make a issue of it. We also have human rights police here in Canada calling landlords to catch them up. As with your fair housing police they act on complaints and do random checks. Contrary to what some may think our human rights codes regarding animals and housing rights are the same and even more restrictive than your fair housing laws in the US.
When landlords choose to operate their business based on fear, which seems to be the predominant issue with ESA, so be it however I prefer to follow and use the law to my advantage and have never had to rent to anyone claiming ESA or a service animal. When you actually understand the laws and codes operation of your business becomes safer and easier to operate. Unfortunately most choose to operate their business with blissful ignorance allowing government to control their business decisions.
Aside from states that require you to rent to the first qualified applicant (which also has go around tactics) there is no law preventing a landlord from choosing the most qualified. Service or ESA animals never take priority over most qualified. They simply should not be a issue for professional landlords. For amateur landlords however every fair housing code is a potential mine field. Beware or get out of the business.
I wouldn't say the landlords posting on this issue are operating based on fear. There is a very large loop hole in the FHA's ESA rules that allows tenants to claim their pets as ESA from a legal standpoint. It helps to talk it out and get more educated on some of these issues so we know how best to deal with it if and when these issues arise.
Yes, you can select the "most qualified" applicant. Nothing wrong with that. But there are pre-conditions to use this strategy.
First, you need to have multiple applicants while you have an ESA applicant. You can't say you have selected a more qualified applicant and still have the ad up, or if someone (a friend of the ESA you just rejected) calls 20 minutes later and you say yeah it's still available.
Second, you are assuming the applicant is honest and disclose the ESA during the application process. How would you deal with this when the tenant declares an ESA three days after moving in?
These ESA certification web sites where you can easily get a legal ESA document have recommendations for their clients on how to act and what to say. These are just some of what they are telling them to do.
(1) If your landlord ask you if you have any pet, tell them no you do not have a pet. This is not lying because as an ESA owner you do not think of your dog being a "pet".
(2) If your landlord ask you if you have any animal. act perplex and say "you mean pet? No I do not have any pet". This is also not lying because you have an ESA not a pet. Basically they restated the question differently and didn't answer the original question.
(3) On the application if they ask if you have any pet or animal, answer with "NO PET".
(4) If at a later date, your landlord accuse you of lying to them when you say "no pet", tell them it's not lying because legally ESA is not a pet. If they say you intentionally mislead when they asked specifically about "animal" and not "pet" you can say ESA is a protected class, you did it to not be discriminated against as an ESA owner. Why would a landlord needs to know if you have an ESA other than to use it as a selection criteria during the application? No one would ask on an application form what the applicant's sexual orientation, religion, race is etc...so why would you ask about ESA? Now they turned the table against you.
So what do you do in this case? Tenant has moved in, has documentation for ESA even though you know it's a set up, the document is a joke but it's legal. Seems the only choice at that time is to accept the "ESA" and do not renew after lease expires. Long term effect being that if it's a no pet multi-family building other tenants follow same strategy.
It certainly seems the pendulum has swung all the way to favor tenants. Theres lots and lots of people who dont care to live around dogs, yet they can have someone move in next door to their "no pets allowed" apartment with a Pit Bull, or 3. Ive read dozens of these threads, and it seems that landlords have to fight fire with fire. The only reasonable option that Ive seen for landlords is to simply rent month to month.
Florida is working on it:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2019/1128/BillText/c1/PDF
Yes. We are another step closer to it. There are some additional discussions about it in another thread:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/505...
Once it's passed my application and lease agreement will reflect it.
I just had another applicant who called and when I said no pet she said "I have a support animal", I said what kind? she said "support animal". I said "you mean a service animal like seeing eye dog or something else like a bomb sniffing dog that works with the swat team" she said "I am not sure, just a support animal" LOL.
I just had a tenant tell my insurance company their inspector couldn't come out unannounced because his pit bulls would bite him. His lease had expired and he was on a month to month tenancy and he got his letter of termination the next day. ESA or not, the letter did not mention any animals as the reason, just that his tenancy was terminated in 30 days. The insurer wouldn't even accept renter's insurance. I find it very helpful to check potential tenants out on social media and if you see pics of dogs or other pets you know they have them.
Not any more.
Last Action: 5/3/2019 Senate - Indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration
Don't know what happened. Very disappointed. I sent an email to Senator Diaz asking what happened.
It’s funny reading your question because you can see how things are both sided. So you and essence are saying that you’re frowning upon a potential tenant, although you reviewed their qualifications and found them to be a desirable tenant…. But then what you’re saying is is that they are scammers because you were trying to charge them a fee for having a dog that helps him with their disability?????? And what exactly would you be charging them a fee for???? so to be honest with you coming from a perspective of a person looking from the outside, it seems like the landlord is the one that is being unfair and unjust, as what does a dog living with them have to do with charging a higher rent??? And perhaps they didn’t disclose this to you, in fear of being denied Tenancy based on their disability. I don’t like your comment I don’t like your way of thinking at all. And for those that refer to people with disabilities as being scammers, you should be ashamed of yourself as you’re trying to scam more rent out of your tenants for having a pet. To answer your question if you previously approved the tenant based on their qualifications and now want to deny them tenancy based on the fact that you want to put your hands in their pockets for their pet that is protected under the ESA law, you will get your *** sued for probably a large amount as it would be a violation and discriminatory to the housing laws . But I will say again I would be ashamed to ask this question and also demonize who are just demonstrating their rights and protections under the laws
Oh, please. It's not about the tenant's disability. It's about the majority of "emotional support" animals being pets and a renter trying to get around a no-pets rule or avoid a pet deposit. It's about people who move into a duplex/fourplex/etc with the understanding that they won't have dogs around them only to find that they step in dog crap every time they come out of doors. It's about people with small children renting next to someone with three pitbulls as "emotional support animals."
It's usually a SCAM. You know it, I know it. All pets provide emotional support. Legitimate service animals are considered medical devices and are available for those with true disabilities. For those few who actually NEED them, it would be much better all around if they got a service animal.
I notice that even YOU refer to them as a "pet." There is much more wear and tear on a unit and its landscaping from an animal.
Does this apply to you? If you have four units or less, have sfr, and don't use a PM you are exempt from Fair Housing.....
The Fair Housing Act covers most housing. In very limited circumstances, the Act exempts owner-occupied buildings with no more than four units, single-family houses sold or rented by the owner without the use of an agent, and housing operated by religious organizations and private clubs that limit occupancy to members.
https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/f...
In the future you might request if the applicant has any animals instead of pets.