Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Fort Collins, CO

Close to an even split

Of the 71,768 occupied homes in Fort Collins, 34,727 are rented. That is 48.4% on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate, against 33.8% for Colorado as a whole. Only Boulder, at 52.8%, and Denver, at 51.2%, rent more. Fort Collins sits third, and close enough to half that the renting household and the owning household are almost equally common here.

That balance matters. The answer a tenant gets about an animal still depends on who reads the request, but the statute behind it is the same for every landlord in town, and what it says changes on one date.

The date to write down is August 12, 2026

May 19, 2026 is the signing date for House Bill 26-1045; the act takes effect on August 12, 2026. Its own legislative declaration explains the point: federal guidance on assistance animals was rescinded, and Colorado is putting that guidance into state law so it survives.

Two definitions do most of the work. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(2.5) names the category: an animal that assists a person with a disability, does work or performs tasks for them, or provides therapeutic emotional support, is an assistance animal: service animals and emotional support animals alike. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(8.5) then defines an emotional support animal as one providing solely emotional support that eases a symptom or effect of a disability. Colorado has stopped treating the two as separate arguments in housing.

A flat ban is now presumed to be discrimination

The new presumptions sit at C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II). Subparagraph (A) presumes that allowing an assistance animal in housing is a reasonable accommodation, so long as the landlord has been given a chance to take part in an interactive accommodation process. Subparagraph (B) goes the other way and presumes that a complete prohibition on assistance animals in housing is discriminatory.

Notice what the first one asks of you. The presumption is tied to the landlord having had that chance. Bringing the animal home and citing the law afterwards gives it away; a short written request, sent before the animal arrives, keeps it.

Read C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) alongside them. An accommodation is an exception or adjustment to a rule, policy, practice or service that a person with a disability may need for an equal chance to use and enjoy housing, and it reaches public and common-use spaces, not just the unit. A rule keeping animals out of the laundry room falls under the same words.

One more point catches Fort Collins renters out. Federal fair housing law leaves owner-occupied buildings of four units or fewer alone; Colorado’s does not. The duty in C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b) reaches a landlord who lives behind the other door, and the three-or-fewer-units carve-out at C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1.5)(a) applies only to the source-of-income rules. Refusing a reasonable accommodation is an unfair housing practice under C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(k), and C.R.S. § 24-34-501(1.3) counts a mental impairment (any behavioral, mental or psychological disorder), as a disability.

How far the landlord’s questions may go

Colorado wrote the limits of the landlord’s enquiry into the statute rather than leaving them to argument. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(C), a request for reasonable documentation is lawful in itself, and so is a good faith interactive process; what may be covered is the disability and the disability-related need, and nothing else. Once either is obvious, the questions have to stop.

A request for a letter, then, is normal, and its scope is narrow: an animal’s breed, its obedience record and any online listing speak to neither question, and Colorado issues nothing that would.

The professional who signs it

Colorado regulates the writer as tightly as the request. C.R.S. § 12-245-229(3)(a) tells mental health licensees: psychologists, licensed counsellors, social workers, and marriage and family therapists. That they may not make the finding unless they have met the patient in person. They must also be sufficiently familiar with the patient and be legally and professionally qualified. Physicians work under a different subsection, C.R.S. § 12-240-144(3)(a), which allows either an in-person visit or telemedicine.

Whoever it is, the output is two written findings, not one: a finding on disability, and a separate finding on the disability-related need for the animal, or a finding that there is not enough information to say. A current letter from someone who actually assessed you is the strongest document you can hold.

Pet charges, and why an approved animal escapes them

Since January 1, 2024, C.R.S. § 38-12-106 has capped what a Colorado landlord may add for a pet. The extra deposit stops at three hundred dollars and has to be refundable. Pet rent has two ceilings (thirty-five dollars a month, or one and one-half percent of the monthly rent), and the statute takes whichever is greater. That runs the wrong way from what most tenants expect: thirty-five dollars is the floor, and a higher rent lifts the lawful figure.

None of it should reach an approved assistance animal, because the animal is not a pet and waiving the charge is the exception to a policy that C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) describes.

Weight and breed limits get their own answer. From August 12, 2026, C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(a)(III) settles it: an animal being there is not, by itself, a direct threat to health or safety, and raises no presumption of substantial physical damage to the property of others. Only documented, specific conduct counts. And when the reason offered is insurance, C.R.S. § 10-4-110.8(16) bars an insurer from refusing or surcharging a homeowner’s or dwelling fire policy over a dog’s breed, or even asking about breed, except whether the dog has been declared dangerous.

Deposits, and the burden that shifted in 2026

C.R.S. § 38-12-103 was rewritten with effect from January 1, 2026, and it shifted the work onto the landlord. You get it back within thirty days, or up to sixty if your lease sets that term. Of the four deductions the section allows, only one usually reaches an animal: damage past normal wear and tear that did not predate the tenancy.

If the landlord keeps money, they carry the burden of proving both that the withholding was proper and what the damage actually cost. Holding one hundred twenty-five percent or more of the real damages is presumed unreasonable. Carpet may not be called substantially and irreparably damaged unless it was replaced with new carpet within the previous ten years, and paint follows a similar rule. Either side can ask for a walk-through inspection under C.R.S. § 38-12-103(1.5); a written request obliges the landlord to produce photographs, invoices, receipts or estimates within fourteen days under subsection (8); and wrongful retention costs treble damages plus fees and costs once you give seven days’ notice of intent to sue.

Misrepresentation, and the defence built into it

C.R.S. § 18-13-107.3 makes it an offence to intentionally misrepresent entitlement to an assistance animal to obtain a housing accommodation, but only after a written or verbal warning has been given first. The offence has ranked as a class 2 civil infraction since March 1, 2022. A first fine is twenty-five dollars; a second, fifty to two hundred; a third or later, one hundred to five hundred.

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 not having one is expressly not evidence that the offence occurred.

Where a Fort Collins complaint goes

There is no municipal fair housing office here, and no local filing window to track. Housing discrimination complaints go to the Colorado Civil Rights Division, on 303-894-2997 or 720-432-4294 in Spanish. C.R.S. § 24-34-504(1) gives one year from the unfair housing practice, and the Division says it cannot extend that deadline for any reason at all.

Start earlier than feels necessary. Filling in intake through CaseConnect is not the same thing as filing a charge; the charge is drafted and signed after that step. Once filed, the landlord gets ten days to answer and you get ten days to reply, and because the Division is a HUD-certified Fair Housing Assistance Program agency, most housing cases carry a state and a federal number.

Free help is closer to hand. Colorado Legal Services keeps a Fort Collins office at 215 W. Oak Street, Suite 800, on 970-493-2891, covering Larimer County along with Logan, Phillips and Sedgwick out on the northeastern plains. Its Larimer County eviction clinic runs Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon at the Larimer County Justice Center, 201 LaPorte Avenue, and help there is limited to the courthouse named on your summons and to your court date. Neighbor to Neighbor works with tenants locally, Housing Catalyst is the city’s housing authority, and Colorado Housing Connects has staffed a bilingual statewide renter helpline since 2014 on 844-926-6632.