Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Camden, DE

A Kent County town, and a rent figure that will not hold still

Camden is a town in Kent County, run by a town council, on the 19934 ZIP. The 2024 Census estimate puts it at 4,191 people. Its history, by the town’s own account, runs back to the 1780s and the Mifflin family. It is not Camden, New Jersey, which is far larger and takes most of the search traffic for the name.

The housing numbers need care. Of 1,779 occupied homes in Camden, the 2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate counts 354 rented: about 19.9 percent. The estimate for median gross rent is $1,836, and the margin on it is plus or minus $551. Taken literally that interval runs from roughly $1,285 to $2,387, which overlaps half the state.

So a fact worth stating plainly: $1,836 is not “Delaware’s highest rent,” and this page will not use it that way. The highest reliable median gross rent among the state’s twenty largest places is New Castle’s $1,739, then Newark’s $1,654. Camden’s figure is the best estimate available for the town, and it is an estimate with a wide mouth.

There is a second thing the census table does not tell you about Camden, and it turns out to be the one that decides which law governs your animal. The table counts rented homes. It does not ask whether the household rents the home or rents the lot underneath it. In Delaware, that distinction sends you to two entirely different statutes.

The same promise, printed twice in Title 25

Delaware has two landlord-tenant regimes. The Residential Landlord-Tenant Code is Part III of Title 25, chapters 51 through 59. The Manufactured Homes and Manufactured Home Communities Act is Part VI, chapter 70. They are not versions of each other. They are separate law.

And each contains a pet-deposit exception written in nearly the same words.

Part III, 25 Del. C. § 5514(i)(3):

“A landlord may require an additional deposit from a tenant with a pet, but shall not require any pet deposit from a tenant if the pet is a duly certified and trained support animal for a disabled person who is a resident of the rental unit.”

Part VI, 25 Del. C. § 7017(h)(4):

“A landlord may not require a pet security deposit from a tenant if the pet is a certified and trained support animal for a person with a disability who is a resident of a manufactured home on a rented lot.”

Two sentences, near-identical, in different Parts of the same title. Neither reaches an emotional support animal, but they fail to reach one for different reasons, and the second is stranger than the first.

Part III has a definition. Part VI has none.

The Part III sentence sits on top of a definition. 25 Del. C. § 5141, which opens “For purposes of Part III of this title,” provides at (38):

“‘Support animal’ shall mean any animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks to meet the requirements of a disabled person, including, but not limited to, minimal protection work, rescue work, pulling a wheelchair or retrieving dropped items.”

That closes the door on § 5514(i)(3) for an animal whose help is its presence. Work and tasks are what the definition asks for, and the illustrations confirm the register.

Chapter 70 has no such definition, and this is the part to get right. Section 5141’s opening words limit it to Part III, and chapter 70 is Part VI, so it does not travel. Chapter 70’s own definitions section, § 7003, defines none of “support animal,” “pet,” “animal” or “disability.” Its thirty-two defined terms were checked one by one.

The result is a phrase operating in § 7017(h)(4) with nothing underneath it. Nobody should fill that gap by importing § 5141(38), and nobody should fill it the other way either. What can be said is what the text says: the sentence requires an animal that is certified and trained, and “certified” names no certifier anywhere in the Delaware Code.

Two ways Part VI is weaker

Reading the two Parts as interchangeable is not just imprecise. It hands a manufactured-home resident two protections they do not have.

The cap can be signed away. In an apartment, § 5514(i)(2) caps a pet deposit at one month’s rent “regardless of the duration of the rental agreement,” full stop. In a manufactured home community, § 7017(h)(3) says a landlord

“may not require a tenant to pay a pet security deposit in an amount in excess of 1 month’s rent, unless the tenant agrees to do so and the full amount is specified in the rental agreement.”

An escape hatch, written into the ceiling. Section 5514 contains nothing like it.

Damage flows the other way. Under Part III, animal damage comes out of the pet deposit first and reaches the security deposit only if the pet deposit is exhausted. Under Part VI, § 7017(h)(2) runs in the opposite direction: where the non-pet deposit is insufficient, damages may be deducted from the pet security deposit “even if such damages were not caused by a pet.”

So the pet money in a manufactured home community is exposed to damage the animal had nothing to do with. Never merge the two sets of numbers.

Which Part your home sits in

Check the lease, not the building. The question is not what the structure is made of; it is what the agreement rents you. A lot rented under a manufactured home in a community is chapter 70 territory. An apartment, a duplex or a rented single-family house is Part III.

If you are unsure, the Delaware Code is published free at delcode.delaware.gov, and Title 25’s own chapter list confirms the split: Part III is chapters 51 to 59, Part VI is chapters 70 and 71.

The duty that does not care which Part

Here is the useful part. Both dead ends lead to the same live route, and it is not in Title 25 at all.

6 Del. C. § 4603A(a)(2) makes it discrimination to refuse

“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.”

And § 4603(b)(2) reaches discrimination in the “terms, conditions, or privileges” of a rental because of disability. Neither provision is indexed to Title 25’s Parts, and neither mentions an animal, a species or training. The word “animal” does not appear anywhere in the Delaware Fair Housing Act. A no-pets rule is a rule. The accommodation is an exception to it. Federally, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B) says the same thing.

Delaware also states the limit twice, at § 4603(c) and § 4603A(f): nothing requires a dwelling be made available where the tenancy would be a direct threat to the health or safety of others, or would result in substantial physical damage to the property of others. That is an assessment of a specific animal’s behaviour, not a rule about size or breed.

What both routes require of you

Neither § 4603A(a)(2) nor § 4603(b)(2) asks what kind of tenancy you hold. Both ask the same two things: that a disability exists, and that this accommodation may be necessary for equal use and enjoyment of the home. The Division of Human and Civil Rights describes the documentation as coming “from a health professional or other person who can establish that the person has a disability and explain the nexus between the disability and the accommodation request.”

A clinician already treating you is the best source of that, when it is available. In Kent County it often is not on a useful timetable: Delaware’s specialist mental-health capacity is concentrated in New Castle County, downstate independent practices are thin on the ground, and a first appointment can be months out. A prescriber may also decline to write a disability determination for someone they have not assessed that way, which is a professional judgement rather than a refusal to help.

A licensed evaluation covers that gap on purpose: a licensed professional works through both questions and records the answer, including when the answer is no. That possibility is exactly what makes the yes worth having.

Two Parts, two sentences, one of them weaker than it looks. Find out which one your lease sits in before you rely on either, and understand that the provision that actually removes the charge is in neither.