How do I verify a Support Animal ESA letter?

The fastest route is our verification tool at my.supportanimal.com/verify: enter the letter number printed on the document, scan its QR code, or upload the PDF, and the result comes back immediately. You can also contact the signing provider directly, using the phone number or email printed on the letterhead. We ask our providers to respond to verification requests within 2 business days.

Can I ask the tenant for their diagnosis?

No. Under the Fair Housing Act framework, a housing provider is entitled to reliable disability-related information, not a diagnosis or medical records (24 C.F.R. § 100.204). The letter is written to satisfy that standard without naming a condition.

Do ESA letters expire?

There's no federal rule that sets a fixed expiration date on ESA documentation. What you're entitled to is confirmation that the documentation reflects a current need, and you can seek that from the signing provider. Our providers respond to verification requests within 2 business days.

Can I charge a pet deposit for an ESA?

Not once the accommodation has been granted: the Fair Housing Act treats an ESA as a disability accommodation rather than a pet, so pet fees and pet deposits can't be charged for it. Actual damage caused by the animal stays billable to the tenant, exactly as it would be with no animal involved.

For Landlords & Property Managers: Verifying an ESA Letter

If a tenant or applicant has handed you a letter from Support Animal, this page explains where it came from, what it's supposed to contain, and how to confirm it's real without asking for anything the Fair Housing Act doesn't entitle you to. We wrote it for landlords and property managers directly, because most of the confusion around emotional support animal documentation comes down to not knowing what's normal to ask for and what isn't.

How our clinical process works

A tenant who comes to us starts by completing an online questionnaire about their circumstances and their relationship with the animal. That questionnaire doesn't produce a letter by itself, and it's not the evaluation. It's intake information, the raw material a clinician needs before forming any judgment at all. Once it's submitted, the case is routed to a mental-health professional who is licensed to practice in the tenant's own state, and that provider reviews it individually, case by case, rather than as a batch. The provider's own review of the tenant's circumstances is the evaluation; the questionnaire is simply what the provider reads before conducting it. Where the intake leaves something unclear, or where the provider needs more context before they can form a judgment, the provider follows up directly with the tenant, in whatever form fits the case. A letter is issued only when the provider's own evaluation concludes that the tenant has a genuine disability-related need for the animal. That outcome isn't automatic, and it isn't guaranteed by completing the questionnaire. We deliberately don't publish a turnaround time for how long it takes a letter to go out, because that depends on the individual case and, where a follow-up is needed, on how quickly it gets resolved with the tenant. We also don't publish an approval rate for the same reason: the outcome belongs to the provider's clinical judgment on that specific case, not to a target we set or a number we manage toward. Where a case doesn't support the need, no letter is issued, full stop.

What the letter contains

Every letter that goes out under a provider's signature includes:

The provider's full name, license type, license number, and the state that issued the license
Direct contact information for that provider, so you can reach them to verify the letter
A unique letter number tied to that specific document
A QR code linking to our verification tool
The date the letter was issued
The tenant's full name
The animal the letter covers
A statement that the tenant has a disability-related need for the animal

What the letter deliberately leaves out is a diagnosis. Under the Fair Housing Act framework, a housing provider is entitled to reliable disability-related information when a disability or the disability-related need isn't obvious, not to the tenant's medical records or the specific condition behind them (24 C.F.R. § 100.204). The letter is written to give you exactly what that standard requires: confirmation from a licensed professional, tied to a real license you can check, without handing over clinical detail that isn't yours to have and that the law doesn't ask you to collect in the first place. That's a deliberate design choice on our end, not an oversight. A letter that named a diagnosis would be giving you more than you're entitled to receive and more than the tenant should have to disclose to keep a roof over their head.

How to verify a letter

There are two routes to confirming a letter is genuine, and the first is faster than the second.

Route 1, the verification tool. Every letter we issue carries a unique letter number and a QR code. Go to my.supportanimal.com/verify, and either enter the letter number printed on the document, scan its QR code, or upload the PDF itself. The result comes back right away: whether that specific document was genuinely issued through our platform by the provider named on it, or not.

Route 2, the signing provider. Call or email the provider directly, using the phone number or email address printed on the letterhead, not a number a tenant gives you separately, and not a general company line. Reaching the letterhead contact matters because it's how you get to the one person who can actually speak to the document: the clinician who signed it. When you reach the signing provider, they can confirm three things. That the letter is genuine and came from their office, that they hold the license listed on it, and that the letter is current as of the date you're asking. What they won't do, and what you shouldn't expect from them, is discuss the tenant's diagnosis, share clinical notes, or describe what came up during the evaluation itself. That information belongs to the tenant, not to the accommodation request, and a provider who protects it on the phone with you is behaving exactly as they should.

A letter is worth a second look if you notice any of the following:

No license number printed anywhere on the document
No letter number or QR code you can check against the verification tool
No direct contact information for the provider who signed it
The listed contact goes unanswered, or the provider can't be reached at the number or address given
Letterhead for a company or website that doesn't name an individual licensed professional

None of those on their own prove a letter is fake: a provider can be temporarily unreachable for unrelated reasons, and the verification tool answers only the authenticity question and stops there, but any of them is a reasonable basis to ask the tenant for a letter that meets a standard you can actually check, from a provider whose license and contact information you can confirm are real.

Want a structured pass first? Our ESA letter legitimacy checker walks through the same elements one by one and tells you which ones a document is missing.

Our provider-response commitment

When you contact one of our providers to verify a letter, we expect that request to be answered within 2 business days. That's not a best-effort target or an average we're citing after the fact. It's the standard our providers work to on every verification request, and it applies whether you're reaching out by phone or email, and regardless of which state the provider is licensed in. You don't need to explain why you're calling beyond the fact that you're verifying a letter a tenant or applicant has given you; that's a routine request, and our providers treat it as one. A listed contact who hasn't gotten back to you within that two-business-day window is not, by itself, a reason to doubt the letter: check it against the verification tool first. It's the combination that's worth treating as a flag: a letter that the tool doesn't recognize and a provider you can't reach at the letterhead contact. Either signal alone is ordinary friction; both together is something to raise with the tenant.

What you may ask (and what you may not

When a tenant's disability or their disability-related need for the animal isn't obvious), and for most conditions that qualify someone for an ESA, it won't be. You're entitled to ask for reliable documentation of it. That's the accommodation duty set out in the Fair Housing Act itself, at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B), and spelled out in more detail in the implementing regulation at 24 C.F.R. § 100.204. A signed letter from a licensed provider, of the kind described above, is what satisfies that request. You're allowed to confirm the letter is real, and you're allowed to expect it to actually come from a provider who evaluated the tenant. You're just not entitled to go further than that.

What you're not entitled to ask for or impose:

The tenant's specific diagnosis or their underlying medical records
Completion of your own custom certification or verification form as a precondition for accepting a letter that already meets the federal standard
A pet fee or pet deposit on an animal covered by a granted accommodation, though you can still bill the tenant for actual damage the animal causes, the same as you would for any tenant
Breed, weight, or size restrictions applied to the animal. Those lease terms govern pets, and an ESA isn't legally a pet, however it's described elsewhere in the lease

The list above is the federal floor, and it applies everywhere, but several states build additional requirements on top of it: a minimum length for the provider-tenant relationship before a letter can be written, specific disclosure language the letter has to include, or extra documentation standards that go beyond what federal law requires. Those state-level rules are exactly the kind of detail worth checking before you act on a letter, since a document that clears the federal bar might still fall short of what a particular state expects. If you manage property in a state with its own rules on the books, our guides for California, Texas, and Florida break down what's different there, state by state.

If you're a tenant who needs a letter, start here.

Verifying an ESA letter as a housing provider: what you may ask, what you may not, and how to confirm a letter is genuine — The landlord summary, in one card.