Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Aurora, CO

A city split between two county courthouses

Aurora is one city with two county lines running through it. Part of it falls in Arapahoe County and part in Adams County, and that single fact decides which free eviction clinic is yours. Colorado Legal Services holds the Arapahoe County clinic on Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at 1790 West Littleton Blvd in Littleton. The Adams County clinic runs Wednesday and Friday, 8 to 11 a.m., at 1100 Judicial Center Drive in Brighton.

Two Aurora renters can live a short drive apart and be sent to different buildings on different mornings. Clinic help is available only at the courthouse named on your summons, and only on your court date, so the summons settles it. Case work for the whole area runs out of the Colorado Legal Services office at 1560 Broadway, Suite 1100, on 303-837-1313, covering Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Gilpin and Jefferson counties.

Aurora has no fair housing office of its own

There is no city desk in Aurora that takes a housing discrimination complaint. It goes to the Colorado Civil Rights Division, part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, and C.R.S. § 24-34-504(1) bars a housing charge that is not filed within one year of the practice complained of. The Division states it cannot extend that year for any reason, however good.

One step catches people out. Sending intake through the Division’s CaseConnect system does not file anything. The charge is drafted and signed after intake, so a tenant who starts in month eleven can still lose the claim. Because the Division is a HUD-certified Fair Housing Assistance Program agency, most housing matters end up carrying a state case number and a federal one together. Its number is 303-894-2997, with a Spanish line on 720-432-4294. The Denver Metro Fair Housing Center answers fair housing questions across the metro area, Aurora included.

What Aurora’s rental numbers actually say

Aurora has 145,310 occupied homes, of which 54,627 are rented. That is a 37.6% renter share against 33.8% statewide, on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate, in a city of 403,130 people on the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2024 estimate.

Size of landlord makes no difference to the answer. Federal law leaves owner-occupied buildings of four units or fewer outside its reach; Colorado’s disability rules do not. The narrow carve-out for buildings of three units or fewer at C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1.5)(a) applies only to the source-of-income rules. A duplex owner in Aurora owes the same accommodation duty as a 900-unit complex.

The presumption that arrives on August 12, 2026

House Bill 26-1045 was signed on May 19, 2026 and takes effect on August 12, 2026. Its legislative declaration says the purpose is to restore rescinded federal guidance by codifying it in state law.

Three pieces of it matter most. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(2.5) draws the category wide: an animal qualifies where it gives therapeutic emotional support to a person with a disability, or does work for them, performs tasks, or assists them. An emotional support animal sits inside that category, not outside it. C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(A) presumes that allowing an assistance animal in housing is a reasonable accommodation. C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(B) presumes a complete prohibition on assistance animals discriminatory.

C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(a)(III) shuts down the fear argument. An animal simply living in the unit proves no danger to health or safety, and it raises no presumption that other people’s property will suffer substantial physical damage. A landlord may still raise documented, specific conduct by the animal.

Ask before the animal arrives

The presumption comes with a condition attached: it holds where the housing provider has been given an opportunity to engage in an interactive accommodation process. Act on that sentence.

Make the request in writing, and make it before the animal moves in. The thing you want bent is a rule, policy, practice or service, and C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) names the bending of it a reasonable accommodation: one necessary for a person with a disability to have equal opportunity to use and enjoy housing, public and common-use spaces included: the shared halls, lobbies and grounds of an apartment community. Raising the law after the animal is already in the unit does not cancel the landlord’s duty under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b), but it does surrender a presumption you were entitled to.

Being asked for documents, and who may write them

A request for paperwork is not, by itself, discrimination. C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(C) says a provider does not discriminate solely by asking for reasonable documentation of the disability or of the disability-related need, or by running a good faith interactive process, unless the disability or the need is obvious. The two subjects named are also the boundary. Breed, weight and training sit outside them, and so does any online registry, because none exists and no Colorado agency issues one.

Colorado is equally particular about the author. C.R.S. § 12-245-229(3)(a) requires a mental health licensee (psychologist, counsellor, social worker, marriage and family therapist), to have met the patient in person. C.R.S. § 12-240-144(3)(a) permits a physician to meet the patient in person or by telemedicine. Either must be sufficiently familiar with you and legally and professionally qualified, and must produce a written finding on disability and a separate written finding on the disability-related need. Disability covers mental impairment (any behavioural, mental or psychological disorder), under C.R.S. § 24-34-501(1.3).

Pet charges, breed lists, and the insurance line

C.R.S. § 38-12-106 has capped pet charges since January 1, 2024. An additional pet deposit stops at three hundred dollars and must be refundable. Additional pet rent stops at thirty-five dollars a month or one and a half percent of the monthly rent, whichever of the two is larger, so the percentage becomes the operative ceiling once rent climbs past roughly two thousand three hundred dollars.

Those ceilings describe pets. An approved assistance animal is not a pet, and dropping the charge is the sort of exception to a policy that § 24-34-501(3.5) is written for, so the right figure for both is nothing.

Breed lists get a separate answer. When an Aurora leasing office says its insurer will not allow the dog, C.R.S. § 10-4-110.8(16) has since January 1, 2024 barred an insurer from refusing or surcharging a homeowner’s or dwelling fire policy over a dog’s breed, and barred it from asking about breed at all beyond whether the dog has been declared dangerous.

The deposit at the end of the tenancy

C.R.S. § 38-12-103, rewritten by House Bill 25-1249 with effect from January 1, 2026, governs move-out. The deposit returns within thirty days, or up to sixty where the lease says so, and money may be held back only for unpaid rent, unpaid utilities, other lawful charges the lease names, and repair of damage beyond normal wear and tear that did not already exist when you arrived.

The burden of proof rests on the landlord. Both on whether the withholding was wrongful and on the amount of the actual damages. Keeping 125% or more of actual damages is presumed to exceed them unreasonably. Carpet may not be treated as substantially and irreparably damaged if it was not replaced with new carpet in the preceding ten years, and paint follows a parallel rule. Under C.R.S. § 38-12-102(4), uncleanliness now counts as normal wear and tear unless the unit is substantially less clean than at the start of the lease.

Either party may request a walk-through inspection under § 38-12-103(1.5), and a written request obliges the landlord to hand over photographs, inspection reports, receipts, invoices or estimates within fourteen days under § 38-12-103(8). Wrongful retention costs treble damages plus attorney fees and costs, after seven days’ written notice of intent to sue.

Misrepresentation, and the defence written beside it

C.R.S. § 18-13-107.3 makes it an offence to intentionally misrepresent an entitlement to an assistance animal in order to obtain a housing accommodation. One element is easy to miss: the person must already have been given a written or verbal warning. It has been a class 2 civil infraction since March 1, 2022, carrying a twenty-five dollar fine for a first offence, fifty to two hundred for a second, and one hundred to five hundred after that.

The same statute supplies the answer. A written finding made under C.R.S. § 12-240-144(1)(a) or § 12-245-229(1)(a) is an affirmative defence, and the absence of one is expressly not proof of the offence. A current letter from a licensed professional who genuinely assessed you is the strongest thing an Aurora renter can hold, and where that professional is a therapist rather than a physician, the assessment has to have happened in person.

Colorado has enforced a statewide fair housing law since 1959, the first in the nation and nine years ahead of the federal Fair Housing Act. From August 12, 2026 it hands Aurora renters a presumption to argue from rather than a case to build from scratch.