Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Longmont, CO

Sharing a county is not sharing an ordinance

Longmont and the City of Boulder sit in the same county and are close in size: 99,818 people here against Boulder’s 106,803, on the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2024 subcounty estimates. That closeness breeds a costly confusion: tenants assume whatever protection Boulder arranged for itself covers the whole county.

It does not. A city ordinance is the law of the city that passed it, and Boulder’s stops at Boulder’s limits. Longmont has adopted no version, and no Longmont office takes a housing discrimination charge or runs its own filing clock.

The practical effect is smaller than it sounds. The state layer matters most, and it is identical on both sides of the line. A Longmont renter and a Boulder renter hold the same rights, with a different first phone number to dial.

Who rents in Longmont

Of 42,155 occupied homes in the city, 15,823 are rented: a renter share of 37.5% on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, table B25003, against 33.8% for Colorado as a whole.

Set it beside the neighbour: Boulder rents at 52.8%, the highest share of any city in the state. Longmont is a comparatively owner-heavy town next door to the most tenant-heavy one, which shapes who your landlord is likely to be: a single-property owner or a family that kept the house, rather than a management company with an accommodations inbox.

The small-landlord myth, and why it fails in Colorado

Small landlords are the ones who repeat the exemption story. The building is owner-occupied, it has four units or fewer, and federal fair housing law genuinely does leave it alone.

Colorado’s law does not. The state act has no disability carve-out for small properties, and the three-or-fewer-units exception at C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1.5)(a) is confined to the source-of-income provisions. The duty in C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b) (not to refuse an accommodation necessary for equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling), binds the owner of a Longmont duplex exactly as it binds a corporate landlord.

One statute for both sides of the county line

Two dates matter here. House Bill 26-1045 was signed on May 19, 2026. It takes effect on August 12, 2026. Lawmakers put the reason in the bill’s own declaration: rescinded federal guidance is being restored, this time as Colorado statute.

It supplies definitions Colorado lacked. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-301(2.5), an animal counts as an assistance animal when it works for a person with a disability, performs tasks, assists them, or gives therapeutic emotional support. One term now covers a service animal and an emotional support animal alike. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(8.5) then treats the emotional support animal on its own: an animal whose only contribution is emotional support alleviating a symptom or an effect of a disability.

Two presumptions follow. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(A), permitting an assistance animal in housing is presumed to be a reasonable accommodation. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(B), a complete prohibition of assistance animals in housing is presumed to be discriminatory.

The clause that decides whether the presumption is yours

The first presumption carries a condition, and skipping past it is the commonest way a good claim gets weaker. It holds so long as the housing provider has been given an opportunity to engage in an interactive accommodation process.

An owner-managed Longmont rental has no portal to build that record for you. Send an email, keep the reply, date everything, and ask before the animal is in the unit. A request made afterwards lets the landlord say the process never happened, which turns the case into a fight about procedure rather than about your disability.

C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) also defines a reasonable accommodation as an exception or adjustment to a rule, policy, practice or service, expressly including public and common-use spaces. A “no animals in the courtyard or laundry room” rule sits inside that definition.

Paperwork: what may be asked, and who may write it

Being asked for documents is not, by itself, discrimination. C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(C) treats two steps as lawful in themselves: asking for reasonable documentation of the disability, or of the disability-related need, and running a good faith interactive process. That stops being true once either is obvious. The request has boundaries: your disability and your need for the animal, not breed, weight, obedience training or any online listing. No Colorado agency issues a registration or certificate for an assistance animal, so nothing of that sort can be demanded.

Who signs matters more than most Longmont renters expect. Under C.R.S. § 12-245-229(3)(a), a mental health licensee (psychologist, counsellor, clinical social worker, marriage and family therapist) may not make a finding unless they have met the patient in person. C.R.S. § 12-240-144(3)(a) gives physicians the wider option of meeting in person or by telemedicine. A video appointment therefore satisfies the rule for one profession and not the other. Either way the professional must be sufficiently familiar with you, be legally and professionally qualified, and set down a written finding on disability plus a separate written finding on the disability-related need.

That finding does double duty. C.R.S. § 18-13-107.3 makes it a class 2 civil infraction to intentionally misrepresent an entitlement to an assistance animal to obtain housing, but only where a written or verbal warning came first, and a written finding under C.R.S. § 12-240-144(1)(a) or § 12-245-229(1)(a) is an affirmative defence. The statute is explicit that lacking one is not proof of the offence.

Charges a Longmont lease may and may not carry

Since January 1, 2024, C.R.S. § 38-12-106 has limited what a pet can cost a tenant: the additional deposit tops out at three hundred refundable dollars, and additional monthly rent at thirty-five dollars or one and one-half percent of the rent, whichever is greater. The percentage only overtakes the flat figure above roughly $2,333 of rent.

An approved assistance animal should carry neither charge. Dropping the fee is the sort of exception to a policy that C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) describes.

Breed limits get their own answer. From August 12, 2026, C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(a)(III) takes an animal’s presence out of the direct-threat category on its own, and blocks any presumption that the animal will substantially damage what belongs to other people. Documented, specific conduct may still be weighed. Where a landlord blames the insurer, C.R.S. § 10-4-110.8(16) denies carriers any breed-based ground for declining or surcharging a homeowner’s or dwelling fire policy, and allows only one question touching breed, whether the dog has been declared dangerous.

Getting the deposit back

The rewrite of C.R.S. § 38-12-103 that took effect on January 1, 2026 is worth reading before move-out day. Return is due in thirty days, or up to sixty if the lease says so, and deductions are limited to unpaid rent, unpaid utilities, other lawful charges named in the lease, and damage beyond normal wear and tear that did not already exist when you arrived. Under C.R.S. § 38-12-102(4) normal wear and tear now takes in uncleanliness, unless the unit is substantially less clean than at the start.

The landlord proves the case, not you: both that the withholding was not wrongful and what the actual damages were. Holding 125% or more of actual damages is presumed to exceed them unreasonably, and C.R.S. § 38-12-103(11)(c) bars calling carpet substantially and irreparably damaged if it was not replaced with new carpet in the preceding ten years. A written request obliges the landlord to produce the photographs, receipts, invoices or estimates within fourteen days. Wrongful retention exposes them to treble damages, attorney fees and costs, once you have given seven days’ written notice of intent to sue.

Where a Longmont complaint actually goes

To the Colorado Civil Rights Division, which enforces a state law older than the federal Fair Housing Act, Colorado passed the country’s first statewide fair housing act in 1959. C.R.S. § 24-34-504(1) gives you one year from the unfair housing practice, and the Division says plainly that it cannot extend that for any reason. Submitting intake through CaseConnect is not filing the charge; the charge is drafted and signed afterwards, so an intake begun in month eleven can still miss. Because the Division is a HUD-certified Fair Housing Assistance Program agency, most housing cases end up dual-filed with a state and a federal case number. Reach it on 303-894-2997, or 720-432-4294 in Spanish.

Local help exists without a city civil rights office. Colorado Legal Services has no Longmont branch, but its Boulder office covers Boulder County from 2935 Baseline Road, Ste 301, on 303-449-7575. Longmont’s own Housing and Community Investment division administers the city’s CDBG, HOME and affordable housing dollars and offers free housing counselling plus a rehabilitation programme for income-qualified residents. Boulder County runs a housing helpline, the Longmont Housing Authority handles assisted housing here, and the Denver Metro Fair Housing Center reports working across seven counties, Boulder included. Statewide, Colorado Housing Connects has staffed a bilingual renter helpline since 2014 on 844-926-6632.