# ESA Letter in Georgetown, DE: Two Forums, Two Clocks

> Georgetown is the Sussex County seat and hosts the state's fair housing office. Delaware gives one year to complain there and two years to sue — separately.

- Source: https://supportanimal.com/blog/delaware-emotional-support-animal/georgetown/
- Publisher: Support Animal (supportanimal.com)
- Updated: 2026-09-05
- License note: informational content; not legal or medical advice.

## Key facts

- Population: 8,098
- Households renting: 49.5%
- Typical pet deposit (as a pet): Capped at 1 month's rent
- Typical pet rent (as a pet): Monthly pet rent: no cap
- Breed/weight limits common: sometimes
- Pet fees, deposits, and breed limits with a valid ESA letter: none (FHA reasonable accommodation)

## The town where the paperwork already lives

Georgetown is a **town** of 8,098 people, governed by a town council, and it
is the **seat of Sussex County**. Nothing about that is decorative for a
tenant with a housing problem. The Delaware Division of Human and Civil
Rights keeps its Sussex County office here, at the Thurman Adams Jr. State
Service Center on South Bedford Street. The Community Legal Aid Society's
Sussex office is here too, in Georgetown Professional Park. First State
Community Action Agency (the first and still the only community action
agency in Delaware) is headquartered in Georgetown.

Half the town rents. Of 2,529 occupied homes, **1,253** are renter-occupied:
49.5 percent, against 27.0 percent across Delaware.

On rent, be careful with the number. The 2020–2024 American Community Survey
five-year estimate puts Georgetown's median gross rent at $1,410, but the
margin of error on that estimate runs to roughly $203 either side, so it is
an estimate and not a fact. The figure that will hold is the statewide one:
**$1,401**.

## Two ways to complain, and they run on different clocks

Delaware gives a tenant refused a reasonable accommodation two separate
routes, and a great deal of confusion comes from treating them as one.

The administrative route goes to the Division, and 6 Del. C. § 4610(a)(1)a.1. allows a complaint
"not later than 1 year" after the practice occurred or terminated, or one year after it "has
been discovered or reasonably should have been discovered." One year, from either the act or its
discovery. Filing costs nothing.

The other route is a lawsuit, and it lives in 6 Del. C. § 4613(a)(1)a.:

> "a. An aggrieved person may commence a civil action in the county in which the discriminating
> housing practice is alleged to have occurred **not later than 2 years after the occurrence or
> the termination of an alleged discriminatory housing practice, not later than 2 years after
> such practice has been discovered or reasonably should have been discovered by the aggrieved
> person, or not later than 2 years after the breach of a conciliation agreement** … **whichever
> occurs last** …"

Two years, not one. Three separate triggers, and the statute says outright that the one which
occurs **last** governs. And the county named in the first line, for a Georgetown tenancy, is
Sussex.

## The sentence that stops the second clock

Follow § 4613(a)(1) into its next paragraph:

> "b. The computation of such 2-year period **shall not include any time during which an
> administrative proceeding under this chapter was pending** …"

That is tolling, and it changes how the two routes fit together. Time spent
in front of the Division is not time spent burning the two years. A tenant
who complains to the Division inside the first year, waits through an
investigation, and comes out the other end without the result they wanted
has not spent that period of the litigation clock.

## Which forum, and whether you have to choose

The chapter answers this in two more sentences.

> "(2) An aggrieved person may commence a civil action under this subsection **whether or not a
> complaint has been filed under § 4610** … but if the Division has obtained a conciliation
> agreement with the consent of an aggrieved person, no action may be filed … except for the
> purpose of enforcing the terms of such an agreement.
> (3) An aggrieved person **may not commence a civil action** … if an Administrative Hearing
> Officer or Panel **has commenced a hearing on the record** …"

So the two routes are not sequential and they are not exclusive, until two
specific things happen. Signing a conciliation agreement closes the
courthouse except to enforce what was signed. So does a hearing on the
record that has actually begun. Separately, 6 Del. C. § 4612(a) lets any
party elect a civil action in place of the administrative hearing within
**20 days** of service of the charge.

Both of those are decisions, made under time pressure, about a case that
already exists. They are not reasons to delay starting one.

## What each forum can give you

The administrative side, under 6 Del. C. § 4612(g)(3), can order **actual
damages**, costs, expenses, attorney's fees and injunctive or other
equitable relief, plus a civil penalty payable to the state: up to $10,000
for a first discriminatory practice, $25,000 where one prior practice was
adjudged within five years, and $50,000 where two or more were within seven.

The court side, under § 4613(c), reaches further in one respect: in Superior Court "the
aggrieved person may be awarded **actual and punitive damages**," with injunctive and
affirmative relief available in the Court of Chancery, and the court may in its discretion allow
"the prevailing aggrieved person or persons, reasonable attorneys' fees, expenses and costs."
Under § 4613(b) a court may also appoint an attorney, or let the action proceed without payment
of fees, costs or security, where in its opinion the person is financially unable to bear them.

The honest other half is § 4615, which allows fees and expenses **against** a complainant where
an action was brought "for an improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay
or needless increase in the cost of litigation." Both edges are in the same chapter.

## The claim underneath both of them

Neither clock means anything without something to complain about, and in a
Georgetown rental that something is 6 Del. C. § 4603A(a)(2), discrimination
on the basis of disability 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"

together with § 4603(b)(2), which reaches the "terms, conditions, or privileges" of a rental. A
pet fee attached to an animal that a required accommodation put in the unit is a term of the
rental imposed because of disability. That is the route for the money, and it is the only one:
25 Del. C. § 5514(i)(3)'s pet-deposit bar is written for a "duly certified and trained support
animal," which 25 Del. C. § 5141(38) defines as an animal "individually trained to do work or
perform tasks." It reads like a match. It is not one.

Delaware's answer on what a landlord may still refuse is at § 4603(c) and § 4603A(f): a tenancy
that would be a "direct threat" to others' health or safety, or cause "substantial physical
damage to the property of others." Conduct, shown case by case.

## One file, built to survive both

Here is the practical consequence of having two forums. The document that
goes to the Division in year one is the same document that has to stand up
in a Sussex County courtroom in year two. It does not get rewritten in
between, and its date is fixed the day it is written.

The Division publishes the standard it applies. There must be a "nexus" between what is asked
for and the disability, and the documentation should come

> "**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, unless
> the disability is apparent to the housing provider.**"

The Division says nothing at all about animals (the words do not appear on
its fair housing pages), so what it is describing is a finding about a
person, made by someone qualified to make one.

Your own treating clinician is the first place to ask, and where the
relationship is real their letter is the strongest version of that document.
The friction in Sussex County is thin supply: few independent mental-health
practices, the state's specialist capacity concentrated in New Castle
County, and a seasonal population in the eastern beach towns that makes a
year-round appointment harder to get than a headcount implies. A clinician
may also decline to write a disability determination, and that is a
legitimate answer.

Where that door does not open inside a year, a licensed evaluation is the
same assessment arranged deliberately: a licensed professional decides
whether a disability exists and whether this animal answers it, then puts
the finding in writing or explains why they will not. The second outcome has
to be genuinely possible, or the first one is worth nothing in either forum.

Georgetown gives a tenant a year to walk into the state office on South
Bedford Street and two to file in Sussex County. Neither clock produces the
file.

## What Georgetown landlords can and cannot do

**Cannot:**
- May not refuse a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices or services where it may be necessary to afford a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling: 6 Del. C. § 4603A(a)(2).
- May not discriminate because of disability in the terms, conditions or privileges of the rental, or in the services and facilities provided with it: 6 Del. C. § 4603(b)(2). This is where a charge attached to a required animal is met.
- May not require a security deposit above one month's rent where the agreement runs a year or more, or on a month-to-month tenancy once it has lasted a year, 25 Del. C. § 5514(a)(2)–(3), and those limits do not apply to furnished units at all, § 5514(a)(4).
- May not inquire whether an applicant for a dwelling has a disability, or as to its nature or severity, except by inquiries made of all applicants alike: 6 Del. C. § 4603A(a)(4).

**Can:**
- May require a pet deposit, capped at one month's rent regardless of the length of the agreement, 25 Del. C. § 5514(i)(2), but that deposit is a separate and additive ceiling from the security deposit, which § 5141(33) defines as "exclusive of a pet deposit."
- Must remit the deposit and provide an itemized list of damages within twenty days of the end of the tenancy; failure to itemize is an acknowledgment that no payment for damages is due, and failure to remit entitles the tenant to double the amount wrongfully withheld, 25 Del. C. § 5514(e)–(g).
- May charge an application fee of no more than the greater of 10 percent of the monthly rent or $50, on pain of double damages, 25 Del. C. § 5514(d).
- May decline where the tenancy would constitute a direct threat to the health or safety of others, or would result in substantial physical damage to the property of others, 6 Del. C. §§ 4603(c) and 4603A(f). The assessment is individualised.
- Is outside the state accommodation duty only in the case 6 Del. C. § 4607(e) describes: a dwelling of no more than four families where the owner occupies one of them. Discriminatory advertising under § 4603(b)(3) remains unlawful even there, and the federal Fair Housing Act runs its own exemptions on its own terms.

## How to get an ESA letter in Georgetown

1. **Check that you qualify**, Answer a short screening about how your condition affects daily life in Georgetown. No diagnosis paperwork needed up front. (About 5 minutes: free)
2. **Connect with a licensed professional**, You are matched with a provider licensed for Delaware clients who reviews your situation in a telehealth evaluation. (Telehealth evaluation)
3. **Complete your evaluation**, The professional evaluates whether an emotional support animal alleviates symptoms of a condition recognized in the DSM-5. Honest evaluations, not everyone qualifies. (Most of Our Applicants Qualify)
4. **Receive your signed letter**, Your letter arrives on the professional's letterhead with their license number: the documentation Delaware landlords may lawfully request. (Typically within days of approval)
5. **Send it to your landlord**, Submit the letter with a short reasonable-accommodation request. Pet fees, pet deposits, and breed limits no longer apply to your animal in Georgetown. (Protection under FHA + state law)

## Conditions that can qualify for an ESA

No fixed government list exists. A licensed professional evaluates whether an animal alleviates symptoms of a DSM-5-recognized condition, commonly:

- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Major depressive disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Panic disorder
- Social anxiety disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Bipolar disorder
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Phobias with housing impact
- Chronic stress affecting daily function

## Housing help in Georgetown

- [Town of Georgetown](https://www.georgetowndel.com/) (town government)
- [Community Legal Aid Society, Inc., Sussex County office](https://www.declasi.org/contact-us/) (legal aid)
- [First State Community Action Agency](https://www.firststatecaa.org/) (community action agency)
- [DHCR, Fair Housing Information Center](https://humanandcivilrights.delaware.gov/fair-housing-information-center/) (fair housing)
- [Charter of the Town of Georgetown](https://charters.delaware.gov/georgetown.html) (ordinance)

## Frequently asked questions

### How long do I have to sue over a refused accommodation in Delaware?

Two years. 6 Del. C. § 4613(a)(1)a. allows a civil action "not later than 2 years after the occurrence or the termination of an alleged discriminatory housing practice," or two years after it was discovered or reasonably should have been, or two years after breach of a conciliation agreement, "whichever occurs last." The action is brought in the county where the practice is alleged to have occurred: Sussex, for a Georgetown tenancy.

### Does time spent with the Division count against the two years?

No. § 4613(a)(1)b. provides that the computation of the two-year period "shall not include any time during which an administrative proceeding under this chapter was pending." The litigation clock stops while the agency case runs, so a tenant who complains to the Division and comes away unsatisfied has not spent that period.

### Do I have to complain to the Division before I can sue?

No. § 4613(2) allows a civil action "whether or not a complaint has been filed under § 4610." Two things do close the courthouse: a conciliation agreement obtained by the Division with the tenant's consent, after which an action may be filed only to enforce that agreement, and, under § 4613(3), an administrative hearing that has commenced on the record.

### Can I switch from the administrative hearing to court once a charge issues?

Yes, but the window is short. Under 6 Del. C. § 4612(a), any party may elect to have the claim decided in a civil action rather than at the administrative hearing, and the election must be made within 20 days after the charge is served. Twenty days is not long enough to assemble a file, which is the argument for having the documentation settled well before a charge issues.

### What can each forum actually award?

After an administrative hearing, § 4612(g)(3) allows actual damages, costs, expenses, attorney's fees and injunctive or equitable relief, plus a civil penalty to the state of up to $10,000 for a first practice, $25,000 with one prior within five years and $50,000 with two or more within seven. In court, § 4613(c) allows actual and punitive damages in Superior Court, equitable relief in Chancery, and reasonable attorneys' fees, expenses and costs in the court's discretion.

### What if I cannot afford a lawyer?

6 Del. C. § 4613(b) allows a court to appoint an attorney for the aggrieved person, or to authorise the action to proceed "without the payment of fees, costs or security" where in the court's opinion the person is financially unable to bear the expense. The counterweight is § 4615, which permits fees against a party who brought an action for an improper purpose such as harassment or delay.

### Georgetown's rent figure has a wide margin of error. Which number should I use?

Treat the town figure as an estimate. The 2020-2024 American Community Survey puts median gross rent here at $1,410 with a margin of roughly $203 either side, which is too wide to quote as a settled fact for a town with 1,253 renting households. Delaware's statewide median of $1,401 is the more dependable comparison.

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