Get an ESA Letter in Michigan

With a valid letter

• ✓refuse a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices or services where it may be necessary to give a person with a disability an equal opportunity to use and enjoy residential real property: MCL 37.1506a(1)(b), and 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(a) federally
• ✓rely on a no-pets policy to refuse an assistance animal: the Michigan Department of Civil Rights gives "[a]llowing a service or support animal in a no-pet complex" as its own example of an accommodation state and federal law require
• ✓treat the request as settled by the animal's breed or size where the animal is an approved assistance animal: the accommodation analysis is individual, and a blanket rule is not that analysis
• ✓demand that the tenant register the animal or produce a state identification card. The Michigan Department of Civil Rights runs a voluntary identification programme for trained service animals and tells anyone "required to obtain service animal identification or register a service animal by a landlord" to file a complaint
• ✓require expert-witness testimony or a particular kind of professional: the Michigan Supreme Court vacated any reading of Riverbrook to that effect, holding that neither 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B) nor MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) contains such a requirement
• ✓ask about the existence, nature or severity of a disability as a general screening question, 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(c), which allows only defined inquiries made of every applicant
• ✓hold more than one and a half months' rent in deposits from any tenant, a refundable pet deposit included, because MCL 554.601(d) defines a security deposit to include any amount returnable on the condition the unit is returned as the lease requires, and MCL 554.602 caps the total
• ✓use a deposit for anything but actual damage beyond normal habitation and rent or utility arrears, MCL 554.607, and cannot contract out of the act at all, because MCL 554.606 says its requirements may not be waived
• ✓write a lease clause that discriminates in violation of the PWDCRA: MCL 554.633(1)(c) prohibits it, and MCL 554.636(1) lets the tenant void the lease and recover $250 or actual damages, whichever is greater, once written notice has gone unremedied for 20 days
• ✓refuse to rent, or discriminate in the terms, conditions or privileges of the tenancy, because of a disability: MCL 37.1502(1)(a) and (b)
• ✓refuse a reasonable modification made at the tenant's expense, though it may require restoration of the interior on move-out where that is reasonable, MCL 37.1506a(1)(a)
• ✓start a clock the law does not give it: no Michigan statute sets a deadline for a landlord's answer to an accommodation request, so a request left unanswered is a fact to record, and the tenant's own filing deadlines keep running while they wait

Still applies

• ·show undue hardship if it refuses: MCL 37.1102(2) requires accommodation "unless the person demonstrates that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship", which puts the demonstration on the housing provider
• ·ask for reliable disability-related information where the disability and the need are not obvious: the standard the Michigan Court of Appeals applied in Riverbrook v Fabode, drawn from the 2004 joint statement of HUD and the Department of Justice
• ·not required to accept an animal whose tenancy would be a direct threat to the health or safety of others. 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d), but that is a judgement about the individual animal's conduct, not about its breed
• ·exempt only in narrow circumstances: MCL 37.1503 excepts renting in a building with no more than two families where the owner or their immediate family lives in one of them, or renting a room in a dwelling the lessor lives in. The Michigan Department of Civil Rights states the same exclusion as "[o]wner-occupied one or two family dwellings"