Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Greenwich, CT

The costliest median rent among Connecticut’s twenty largest towns

Greenwich had 64,594 residents on the 2024 Census estimate, tenth among Connecticut’s towns. Size is not what makes it unusual on this list. Price is.

Median gross rent here is $2,674 on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey: the highest of the state’s twenty largest towns, ahead of Stamford at $2,276, Fairfield at $2,185 and Norwalk at $2,073, and $1,186 above the $1,488 Connecticut median.

Renting is also comparatively rare. Of 23,094 occupied homes, 6,932 are rented: 30.0 percent, below the 33.5 percent state share, with only three of the twenty largest towns holding a smaller renter share. A Greenwich renter is in a local minority paying the state’s steepest median.

Which is why the Greenwich version of this question arrives attached to a number: the sum a landlord took at the front of the tenancy and is still holding.

Two months, one month, and the line drawn at sixty-two

Connecticut caps that sum, and the cap is written in two tiers. Section 47a-21(b)(1) provides that “[i]n the case of a tenant under sixty-two years of age, a landlord shall not demand a security deposit in an amount that exceeds two months’ rent.” Subsection (b)(2) then says:

In the case of a tenant sixty-two years of age or older, a landlord shall not demand a security deposit in an amount that exceeds one month’s rent.

Run Greenwich’s median through both. Two months is roughly $5,348. One month is roughly $2,674. The gap between the two tiers (the money that sits with the landlord or with the tenant depending on nothing but a date of birth) is about $2,674. That single month here is close to the whole two-month ceiling a Bridgeport tenant under sixty-two faces at that town’s $1,450 median: the tier is a multiple of local rent, not a dollar figure.

These are illustrations computed from the median, not quoted market terms. Your ceiling is two, or one, times your rent.

The birthday that arrives in the middle of a lease

The second half of (b)(2) rarely makes it into a leasing conversation, and it does real work:

Any landlord who has received a security deposit in an amount that exceeds one month’s rent from a tenant who becomes sixty-two years of age after paying such security deposit shall return the portion of such security deposit that exceeds one month’s rent to the tenant upon the tenant’s request.

Read the last four words. Nothing is triggered by the birthday itself. The landlord’s duty to hand back roughly $2,674 at the local median crystallises when the tenant asks, and a tenant who never asks is owed nothing under this subsection. So ask in writing, date it, and keep the copy.

That matters where an accommodation is already in play. These are separate rights, and asking for one does not spend the other.

A deposit that never stopped being yours

Connecticut is also unusually clear about whose money is being held. Section 47a-21(c) states that “[a]ny security deposit paid by a tenant shall remain the property of such tenant in which the landlord shall have a security interest,” and that it “shall be exempt from attachment and execution by the creditors of the landlord and shall not be considered part of the estate of the landlord in any legal proceeding.”

At Greenwich sums that is not academic. Two months at the median is around $5,348 of a tenant’s money, and the statute keeps it out of reach of whoever the landlord happens to owe.

It also earns. Section 47a-21(i) requires interest on each security deposit at a rate not less than the deposit index defined in § 36a-26, and “[o]n the anniversary date of the tenancy and annually thereafter, such interest shall be paid to the tenant or resident or credited toward the next rental payment due.” Section 47a-21(a)(1) defines accrued interest as that interest “compounded annually to the extent applicable.” The same subsection blocks the obvious workaround (a landlord may not raise the rent because of the requirement to pay that interest), and withholds interest only for a month in which rent ran more than ten days late without a late charge being imposed.

When the tenancy ends, § 47a-21(d)(2) sets the deadline: the deposit with accrued interest, or a written statement of damages, “not later than twenty-one days after termination of a tenancy or fifteen days after receiving written notification of such tenant’s forwarding address, whichever is later.” The forwarding address is the half of that clock you control.

None of it becomes a pet charge

The cap follows the money, not the label on it. Section 47a-21(a)(11) defines a security deposit as any advance rental payment “except an advance payment for the first month’s rent or a deposit for a key or any special equipment.” A refundable “pet deposit” is an advance rental payment. It therefore counts against the ceiling rather than sitting on top of it.

At Greenwich prices the arithmetic is stark. A one-month refundable pet deposit is about $2,674, which for a tenant of sixty-two consumes the entire lawful ceiling on its own, leaving nothing for an ordinary security deposit. A landlord asking for both is asking for something § 47a-21(b)(2) does not permit.

Two things sit outside the definition, and Connecticut caps neither: monthly pet rent and non-refundable fees. The words “pet” and “animal” appear nowhere in the security-deposit chapter. So the deposit cap is not the answer to a pet charge — the accommodation is.

What the request establishes, and what nobody can sell you

The operative sentence is § 46a-64c(a)(6)(C)(ii): discrimination includes “a refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.” A no-pets clause is a rule in “rules, policies, practices or services,” and 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(a) says substantially the same thing federally. Section 46a-64b(8) defines “physical or mental disability” to include, “but not limited to,” persons with a handicap as the federal Fair Housing Act defines it.

An approved accommodation waives the rule. It does not buy a place on the building’s pet fee schedule, which is why the pet deposit, the pet fee and the pet rent all fall away together rather than being negotiated down.

And there is nothing to purchase that produces this result. Connecticut’s one free tag, under § 22-345, goes to a person with a disability whose dog is trained, or in training, as a service animal, and that section takes its definition of “service animal” from 28 C.F.R. § 35.104, which turns on individual training to do work or perform tasks and excludes animals whose function is emotional support. No registry, certificate, vest or ID number moves a Greenwich landlord. A clinician’s judgement does.

If the answer is no, and how the letter gets written

A refusal by a covered landlord goes to the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, whose site starts a complaint with an online inquiry form it states is available in English, Spanish and Polish, beside a “How to File a Discrimination Complaint” link. Section 46a-82(a) files complaints in writing under oath “except that a complaint that alleges a violation of section 46a-64c need not be notarized” (46a-64c being the housing section), and § 46a-82(f)(2) allows 300 days from the act complained of. An older tenant weighing whether it is worth it can also start at the Department of Aging and Disability Services, whose stated mission is maximising “opportunities for the independence and well-being of people with disabilities and older adults in Connecticut.”

None of that begins without the letter, and the letter carries only two assertions: a disability, and an animal needed on account of it. No diagnosis, no records, no symptom list.

A clinician already treating you is the cheapest signature to get and the one to try first, bearing in mind the wait for a slot, and that a Connecticut housing letter may be something nobody has ever asked them to write. A community mental-health clinic is the second route, slower again, because its intake is designed to open a course of care rather than to conclude in a document.

A licensed evaluation exists for the case where neither works: screening questions, a Connecticut-licensed clinician, and a letter only if the assessment supports one. Everything above it (the tiered ceiling, the accrued interest, the waived rule), depends on that judgement, and no deposit cap, tag or receipt is a substitute for it.