Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Westminster, CO

One city, two county lines

Westminster is not a housing provider, and it says so plainly. Its own housing resources page explains that the city partners with the housing authorities in Adams and Jefferson counties because Westminster straddles both. Most cities have one county behind them. This one has two, and a renter with an assistance animal learns it the first time they need help.

Westminster counts 48,106 occupied homes, and 18,320 of them are rented: a renter share of 38.1% against 33.8% for Colorado as a whole, on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, table B25003. The city’s population is 115,302 on the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2024 subcounty estimates.

Everything below turns on one contrast. Your county decides which office picks up. It decides nothing about what your landlord owes you. C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b) makes it discrimination to refuse a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices or services where one is necessary to give a person with a disability an equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling, and C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(k) makes a breach of that section an unfair housing practice. Neither sentence comes with a map.

August 12 reaches both sides

House Bill 26-1045 takes effect on August 12, 2026. It was signed on May 19, 2026 and sits in the session laws as chapter 202. Its declaration states the purpose openly: rescinded federal guidance, restored by writing it into Colorado’s own statute.

The act supplies the vocabulary first. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(2.5) defines an assistance animal as one that does work, performs tasks, assists, or provides therapeutic emotional support to an individual with a disability, and confirms the term takes in an emotional support animal as well as a service animal. C.R.S. § 24-34-301(8.5) defines that support animal as one providing solely emotional support to alleviate a symptom or effect of a disability. C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) defines the accommodation itself: an exception or adjustment to a rule, policy, practice or service, reaching public and common-use spaces too.

Two presumptions follow, and they reach both sides of Westminster at the same hour. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(A), permitting an assistance animal in housing is presumed reasonable. Under C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(B), prohibiting assistance animals outright is presumed discriminatory.

Say it first, on either side

Presumption (A) is conditional. It runs where the housing provider has been given an opportunity to engage in an interactive accommodation process, so the tenant who never asked cannot lean on it.

Make the ask a document. An email or dated letter requesting an exception to the pet policy, naming the animal and offering the finding creates that opportunity and dates it. It has to go out ahead of the animal; the other order hands a landlord a free procedural objection.

What may be asked, and what sits outside the question

C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2(2)(b)(II)(C) settles a common leasing-office argument. Two moves are lawful on their own: asking for reasonable documentation of the disability or the disability-related need, and running a good faith interactive process. Neither is discrimination, unless the disability or the need is obvious.

The subject matter is narrow, though. Two things are in scope: whether you have a disability, and whether the animal relates to it. C.R.S. § 24-34-501(1.3) answers the first broadly, since disability includes a mental impairment, meaning any behavioural, mental or psychological disorder. Outside it sit breed, weight, obedience credentials, and membership of any list. Colorado registers and certifies no assistance animals, so nothing bought online helps and nothing missing from your file hurts.

Who Colorado allows to sign the finding

The state licenses the writer, and the rule differs by profession. C.R.S. § 12-245-229(3)(a) stops a mental health licensee: a psychologist, counsellor, social worker, or marriage and family therapist, from making a finding unless they have met the patient in person. A physician answers to C.R.S. § 12-240-144(3)(a) instead, which allows an in-person visit or telemedicine. The therapist’s rule is the stricter one, and the two do not swap.

Either way, the licensee must be sufficiently familiar with the patient and legally and professionally qualified, and must produce a written finding on the disability plus a separate one on the disability-related need.

That paperwork has a second job. C.R.S. § 18-13-107.3 makes intentional misrepresentation of an entitlement to an assistance animal, to get a housing accommodation, an offence, but only where a written or verbal warning came first, and that warning is an element rather than a formality. It has been a class 2 civil infraction since March 1, 2022, carrying $25 for a first, $50 to $200 for a second, and $100 to $500 after that. A written finding made under C.R.S. § 12-240-144(1)(a) or § 12-245-229(1)(a) is an affirmative defence, and lacking one is expressly not proof of the offence.

Pet money, and the objection about the insurer

C.R.S. § 38-12-106 has fixed the price of a pet in Colorado since January 1, 2024: additional deposit no higher than $300 and refundable, additional rent no higher than $35 a month or 1.5% of the monthly rent, whichever is greater. Read that word: the cap takes the larger figure, so a higher rent lifts the pet-rent ceiling rather than lowering it.

None of it is meant for an assistance animal. An approved one is not a pet, and dropping the charge is the exception C.R.S. § 24-34-501(3.5) describes.

Breed objections usually arrive dressed as insurance. That answer expired on January 1, 2024: C.R.S. § 10-4-110.8(16) stops a carrier denying a homeowner’s or dwelling fire policy, or charging more for one, over a dog’s breed, and limits its breed questions to whether the dog has been declared dangerous. Damage objections meet C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(a)(III), which from August 12 provides that the mere presence of an assistance animal is neither a direct threat to health or safety nor presumed to cause substantial physical damage to others’ property. A landlord may still weigh documented, specific conduct by your animal. Reputation is not conduct.

The deposit, once you hand back the keys

C.R.S. § 38-12-103, rewritten with effect from January 1, 2026, tilted the field. The deposit returns within 30 days, or up to 60 where the lease says so. Only four things may come out: unpaid rent, unpaid utilities, other lawful charges the lease itself names, and repair of damage past normal wear and tear that was not already there when you moved in.

Proof is the landlord’s problem now: they carry the burden on both whether a withholding was wrongful and what the actual damages were, and keeping 125% or more of those damages is presumed to exceed them unreasonably. Carpet may not be treated as substantially and irreparably damaged unless it was replaced with new carpet within the preceding ten years, under subsection (11)(c). Ask for a walk-through under subsection (1.5), and ask in writing for the photographs, receipts, invoices or estimates subsection (8) requires within 14 days. Give seven days’ written notice of intent to sue and a wrongful retention carries treble damages, attorney fees and costs.

The local help splits at the county line

Start at the city’s housing resources page: it does the sorting and hands you out to the county authorities rather than pretending to be one. Maiker Housing Partners is the Adams County housing authority, and it is headquartered in Westminster. The county body sits inside the city that has none of its own.

Free legal help ignores the split. Colorado Legal Services covers Adams and Jefferson alike from its Denver office at 1560 Broadway, Suite 1100, on 303-837-1313. Its in-person eviction clinics do not: help comes only at the courthouse named on your summons, on your court date. The Adams County clinic runs Wednesday and Friday, 8 to 11 a.m., at the Justice Center, 1100 Judicial Center Drive in Brighton. No Jefferson County clinic appears on that list, so a Westminster tenant on the Jefferson side works through the Denver office instead. Before a case exists, Colorado Housing Connects runs a bilingual statewide line on 844-926-6632, operated by Brothers Redevelopment since 2014.

The complaint route that does not split

The Denver Metro Fair Housing Center says it is active in seven counties: Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Boulder, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson, which covers all of Westminster, whichever half you rent in.

A charge goes 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 even for good cause. One trap: intake through CaseConnect is not a filed charge, since the charge is drafted and signed afterwards. Most housing matters are then dual-filed with HUD under a state and a federal number, because the Division is a HUD-certified Fair Housing Assistance Program agency.

Colorado has run a statewide fair housing law since 1959, the first in the nation and nine years ahead of the federal Act. County lines have never been part of it.