HUD narrowed assistance animal rules, and most ESA advice online is now out of date

If you search whether a landlord can charge pet fees for an emotional support animal, most of what comes back says no, citing federal guidance. That guidance no longer exists.

On September 17, 2025, HUD (United States Department of Housing and Urban Development) withdrew two notices that had governed this area for years, FHEO Notice 2013-01 and FHEO Notice 2020-01, both dealing with service and assistance animals in housing. On May 22, 2026, the department permanently rescinded the 2020 notice and announced a new enforcement posture.

Under it, the animals exempt from a housing provider's pet policies and pet fees are confined to trained service animals. HUD says it will pursue cases involving animals trained to perform disability-related work, which is a considerably narrower category than the one that covered emotional support animals.

What changed and what didn't

The distinction now doing the work is training. A service animal is individually trained to perform a task related to a disability, like guiding someone who is blind or alerting to a seizure. An emotional support animal provides comfort by its presence without task training, and that's the category federal enforcement has stepped back from.

Two things didn't change here, and both matter. The Fair Housing Act itself wasn't amended. Congress didn't rewrite the statute, and HUD changed how it enforces the law rather than the law itself. Courts interpreting the FHA aren't bound by an agency's enforcement priorities, so this is a shift in posture rather than a settled ruling.

State and local law still applies independently. Many states and cities have their own fair housing statutes with ESA protections that operate regardless of what HUD does, and in those places failing to waive a pet fee for an assistance animal can still be a failure to accommodate. California, for one, has pursued landlords over emotional support animal accommodations under state law with settlements in the tens of thousands.

What this means in practice

If you have a trained service animal, your position is unchanged and arguably clarified. No pet fee, no pet deposit, no pet rent, no breed or weight restriction. A housing provider may ask whether the animal is required because of a disability and what work it's trained to perform, and may not demand documentation of the disability itself or a demonstration.

If you have an emotional support animal, the answer now depends heavily on where you live, since federal enforcement is unlikely to back you while state or local law still may, and that's the first thing to check rather than the last.

Start with your state's civil rights or fair housing agency, since they enforce state law and can tell you whether ESA accommodations are covered where you rent. A local fair housing organization can usually answer the same question quickly and at no cost.

If your protection is state-based, get the accommodation request in writing and keep the response. A landlord who denies a request in writing has created the record you'd need later, and one who grants it has settled the question for your tenancy.

A note for anyone reading older articles on this, including ones published in the past year. Guidance withdrawn in September 2025 and rescinded in May 2026 still appears as current in a great deal of published advice, and some of it is confidently wrong. Check the date on anything you rely on here.

For the cost side of renting with an animal at all, see our breakdown of what pet rent adds to a first year and the best cities for renters with dogs.

Sources

• Holland & Knight, on HUD's rescission of the 2020 assistance animal notice and the new enforcement posture

• National Low Income Housing Coalition, on the shift away from ESA discrimination cases

• California Civil Rights Department, on state-level enforcement involving emotional support animals