Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Loveland, CO

A city that tells you where to go

Loveland keeps a Fair Housing page of its own, run by the Community Partnership Office at 500 E. 3rd St., Suite 210. The valuable part is what it says: the Colorado Civil Rights Division is the body charged with enforcing the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, and residents reporting housing discrimination should go there.

Treat that as a map, not a brush-off. The city is not an enforcement agency: it does not investigate, does not take a discrimination charge, and has no filing deadline of its own. It has a staffed line on 970-962-2705, Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., a published landlord-tenant resource sheet, and people who work on housing every day. The office administers Loveland’s HUD Consolidated Plan and CDBG funds, works with the Loveland Housing Authority, and staffs the Affordable Housing Commission and the Human Services Commission.

Who rents in Loveland

The city has 34,367 occupied homes, and 13,007 of them are rented. That works out to 37.8%, a little above the 33.8% figure for Colorado as a whole, on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate. Population, on the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2024 estimate, is 81,102.

Renting is common without being the default, roughly three homes in eight, so a request may land with a small owner as easily as with a management company. The law does not shift between them.

What August 12, 2026 changes in Loveland

That is the day House Bill 26-1045 starts operating. Its declaration is blunt about why: federal guidance on assistance animals was rescinded, and Colorado is restoring it by writing it into state law.

The bill defines an assistance animal at C.R.S. § 24-34-301(2.5) as one that works, performs tasks, assists, or gives therapeutic emotional support to a person with a disability, a term taking in emotional support animals and service animals alike. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(8.5) defines an emotional support animal as one providing solely emotional support to ease a symptom or effect of a disability.

Two presumptions follow. 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 that a complete prohibition of assistance animals in housing is discriminatory. And C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(a)(III) removes the argument landlords lean on hardest: the mere presence of an assistance animal is not a direct threat to health or safety and is not presumed to cause substantial damage to anyone’s property. Documented, specific conduct by your particular animal may still be weighed.

The opportunity a landlord has to be given

The first presumption carries a string, and skipping it is the most expensive mistake a tenant makes. It applies where the housing provider has been given an opportunity to engage in an interactive accommodation process.

That means asking, in writing, before the animal moves in. A tenant who brings the animal home and cites the statute afterwards keeps the underlying duty at C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b), refusing an accommodation necessary for equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling is discrimination, and C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(k) makes that an unfair housing practice. But the presumption is probably gone. With a small Loveland landlord who never had a form, an email you can produce later beats a conversation at the door.

Being asked for paperwork is not the same as being refused

Colorado has written into the statute that a housing provider does not discriminate merely by asking. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(C), requesting reasonable documentation of the disability or of the disability-related need is permitted, as is running a good faith interactive process, unless the disability or the need is obvious.

The boundary sits in those two words: the disability, and the need for the animal. That is the whole subject. A demand for breed, weight, proof of training, or an entry in some online directory falls outside it, and no Colorado or federal registry, certificate, or ID card exists that would answer one.

Disability is defined broadly. C.R.S. § 24-34-501(1.3) includes a mental impairment: any behavioural, mental, or psychological disorder, where most emotional support animal requests sit.

The professional Colorado will accept

Colorado regulates the person who writes your documentation, and not every profession the same way. C.R.S. § 12-245-229(3)(a) requires a mental health licensee (psychologist, counsellor, social worker, or marriage and family therapist), to have met the patient in person, to be sufficiently familiar with the patient and the disability, and to be legally and professionally qualified. C.R.S. § 12-240-144(3)(a) gives physicians a wider option: in person or by telemedicine.

Whoever it is must record a written finding on the disability and a separate one on the disability-related need, or a finding that there is too little information to say.

That finding has a second job. C.R.S. § 18-13-107.3 has made it a class 2 civil infraction since March 1, 2022 to intentionally misrepresent entitlement to an assistance animal in order to obtain housing, but only where the person already had a written or verbal warning that it is illegal. Fines start at twenty-five dollars and reach one hundred to five hundred for a third offence. A written finding under C.R.S. § 12-240-144(1)(a) or § 12-245-229(1)(a) is an affirmative defence, and the statute says outright that not having one is no evidence of the offence.

What the animal may cost you

An approved assistance animal is not a pet, and waiving a pet charge is exactly what C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) calls a reasonable accommodation: an exception or adjustment to a rule, policy, practice, or service, including in public and common-use spaces.

The pet ceilings still matter: they tell you what the addendum in front of you may say. C.R.S. § 38-12-106, in force since January 1, 2024, holds an additional pet deposit to three hundred refundable dollars and pet rent to thirty-five dollars a month or one and one-half percent of rent, whichever is greater. At Loveland rent levels the flat thirty-five dollars is usually the higher figure, so it turns up on so many local addenda.

Breed rules get blamed on insurance more than on anything else. C.R.S. § 10-4-110.8(16) stops an insurer refusing or surcharging a homeowner’s or dwelling fire policy over a dog’s breed, and stops it asking about breed at all beyond whether the dog has been declared dangerous. A landlord invoking the carrier describes a decision the carrier may not make.

Moving out with an animal on the lease

The rewritten C.R.S. § 38-12-103 has applied since January 1, 2026, and it moved the weight onto the landlord. The deposit comes back within thirty days, or up to sixty if the lease says so. A landlord may subtract rent you still owe, utilities you still owe, other lawful charges written into the lease, and the cost of repairing damage worse than normal wear and tear, provided that damage was not already present at the start of the tenancy.

If money is kept, your landlord must prove both that the retention was not wrongful and what the actual damages were. Holding one hundred twenty-five percent or more of those damages is presumed to exceed them unreasonably. Carpet gets its own rule: it cannot count as substantially and irreparably damaged unless new carpet went down in the previous ten years. Uncleanliness now counts as normal wear and tear under C.R.S. § 38-12-102(4).

Ask for a walk-through inspection under C.R.S. § 38-12-103(1.5) before handing back the keys, and ask in writing for the photographs, receipts, invoices, or estimates behind any charge, C.R.S. § 38-12-103(8) gives fourteen days. Wrongful retention carries treble damages plus attorney fees and costs, after seven days’ written notice of intent to sue.

If Loveland’s page sends you to the state

It will, so know what waits there. Charges go to the Colorado Civil Rights Division, part of DORA, on 303-894-2997 or 720-432-4294 for Spanish. C.R.S. § 24-34-504(1) allows one year from the unfair housing practice, and the Division says it cannot extend that for any reason, good ones included.

One detail catches people out. Sending intake through CaseConnect is not filing a charge (the charge is drafted and signed later), so a late start buys nothing. The Division is a HUD-certified Fair Housing Assistance Program agency, so most housing matters are dual-filed under a state and a federal case number, and where probable cause is found and conciliation fails, housing cases go to hearing automatically.

Loveland has no legal aid office of its own. Larimer County is covered by Colorado Legal Services from Fort Collins, at 215 W. Oak Street, Suite 800, on 970-493-2891, and the county eviction clinic sits at the Larimer County Justice Center, 201 LaPorte Avenue, Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Colorado Housing Connects, the bilingual renter helpline Brothers Redevelopment has run since 2014, answers on 844-926-6632. Behind all of it sits the country’s first statewide fair housing act, which Colorado passed in 1959, nine years ahead of Congress.