Employee Lease Addendum For Emotional Support Animal In Minnesota
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In most cases, if the tenant currently lives in the rental property, the landlord must allow the service or emotional support animal to live with the tenant while the verification process is happening.
Wait until a landlord accepts your application and offers you the place, then tell them you have an ESA and ask if that should be reflected in the lease or not. If they withdraw the offer you have a pretty strong case of housing discrimination (assuming you can prove the animal has ESA bona fides).
Pursuant to this Emotional Support Animal Lease Addendum, the owner or manager of the property may permit a person with a disability to keep an assistance animal as a reasonable accommodation, upon the following terms and conditions which shall be deemed to be a part of the resident's lease: 1.
For a person to legally have an emotional support animal (ESA), the owner must be considered to have a qualifying mental health or psychiatric disability by a licensed mental health professional (e.g., therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, etc.), which is documented by a properly formatted prescription letter.
Identification and Inquiry of Assistive Animals Under the FHA, a landlord is not required to automatically allow a tenant to have an assistive animal. Instead, the tenant must request the reasonable accommodation and the landlord must consider the request.
Under the federal Fair Housing Act, Utah landlords may not discriminate against those who require the use of service animals or emotional support animals, although Utah only recognizes dogs as service animals.
As a landlord, you can verify the letter in a number of ways. Keep in mind, however, that you may not, for any reason, have direct contact with your tenant's therapist. Attempting to do so may be considered a violation of federal law and the client could have cause to report you or your business to HUD.
Immediately write an email and request that all communication concerning the ESA be kept through email. Do not answer any phone calls from your landlords after this. You want a clear paper trail.
The letter should provide sufficient details about the individual's disability and the animal that is providing emotional support. The letter should include the individual's name, age, and contact information. It should also include the mental health diagnosis and the type of emotional support animal.
