Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Bolingbrook, IL

Disability entered Bolingbrook’s housing law in November 2024

Bolingbrook has had a fair housing law since 1995. For most of that time it did not cover you.

Article II of Chapter 28 came in as Ordinance 95-049 on April 11, 1995, with a short list of protected classes. Ordinance 24-050 amended it on November 12, 2024 and rewrote that list. Section 28-20(a) now bars discrimination in any real estate transaction on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, order of protection status, marital status, physical or mental disability, military status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or unfavorable discharge from military service.

Disability sits in that list because of a vote taken in November 2024. Local disability protection for Bolingbrook renters is less than two years old.

What Ordinance 24-050 left out

The amendment added people. It did not add machinery.

There is no reasonable accommodation clause anywhere in Article II. The village forbids discrimination but never tells a landlord to bend a rule for a tenant with a disability. For an emotional support animal that omission is the whole ballgame. A no-pets clause is not aimed at disabled tenants; it is aimed at animals. You need a duty to make an exception, and Chapter 28 writes none.

The old class list also survives inside the amended article. Subsections 28-20(b)(7) through (9), covering blockbusting and solicitation, still use the shorter version.

A fair housing article with an information desk instead of a forum

Most towns that pass a fair housing law at least gesture at enforcing it. Bolingbrook does not, and is unusually candid about it.

Section 28-21(a) says the village “shall act as a local source for assistance and information for persons who have complaints related to unfair housing practices.” It then defines that assistance: handing you “the names, addresses and telephone numbers of county, state and federal agencies” where you “may file formal complaints.”

Section 28-21(b) puts the village administrator in charge of coordinating those procedures. That is the entire apparatus: no commission, no investigator, no hearing, no filing deadline. Read plainly, the ordinance promises you a phone number.

The state supplies what the village left out

Village Hall does not create the duty, so the state has to. 775 ILCS 5/3-102.1(C)(2) makes it a civil rights violation:

to refuse 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

Note the subject of that sentence. Rules. Not animals. The word “animal” is absent from the Illinois Human Rights Act from end to end, and the state housing discrimination rule at 71 Ill. Adm. Code 2300 gets through eight sections without it too. Illinois shields your support animal by shielding your claim to an exception. Federal law layers on 24 C.F.R. § 100.204, which puts the same obligation on the same kind of rule.

One caution in a village with plenty of small buildings. Section 3-106 lifts some rentals out of the Act, among them an owner-occupied building of not more than four families. Its opening line disclaims only Section 3-102, and each cross-reference inside it goes back there. The accommodation right you would rely on sits one section further along, at 3-102.1, a number 3-106 never says. Take that to a lawyer; do not treat it as settled.

One home in five here is rented

Bolingbrook counts 23,959 occupied homes, and 5,011 of them are rentals. The Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 five-year estimates put the renter share at 20.9% here while Illinois overall sits at 32.9%, the lowest figure among the twenty Illinois cities covered on this site.

That number should change how you ask. Five thousand rental households do not support a large professional leasing industry. Many landlords here own one house or townhouse and have never heard the phrase “reasonable accommodation” said out loud. So put the request on paper, name the clause you want set aside, and attach the letter from the clinician who treats you.

Chapter 8 has one disability line, and it is about public places

The village animal chapter mentions disability exactly once, and it will not help you at home. Section 8-43(b) exempts “dogs under the ownership, possession or control of persons who are physically handicapped, blind or hearing impaired” from the ban on animals in public places. That is a park and sidewalk rule, not a lease rule.

Illinois sets a matching trap one level up. 775 ILCS 5/3-104.1 is titled around landlords who turn away a tenant with a guide, hearing or support dog, and subsection (C) even forbids an extra lease charge beyond real damage the dog causes. It reads like a gift. Then you reach who qualifies: only someone blind, hearing impaired, or living with a physical disability. A mental health condition does not open that door. Section 3-102.1 is the one that does.

Nothing in the village code counts your animals or your fees

Several Illinois municipalities cap how many dogs and cats one household may keep. Bolingbrook does not. No per-dwelling animal limit appears in the code.

Chapter 26, the housing standards and property maintenance chapter, is silent the other way too: no assistance animal, no support animal, no service animal, no pet deposit, no pet fee.

So every animal rule you meet in Bolingbrook is private: lease, landlord or association, never the village. That cuts both ways: no ordinance stands between you and your animal, and no local officer will take your side.

What a landlord here may charge, and what happens at move-out

No Illinois statute limits a security deposit, a pet deposit or a monthly pet charge, and Bolingbrook adds none of its own. For an ordinary pet, a landlord here may name any figure the market will pay.

For an approved assistance animal the figure is nothing, and a cap is not why. A price tag on the animal is a refusal of the accommodation, in the same way a flat no is. On deposits the Act is blunt at 775 ILCS 5/3-102.1(C)(1): a landlord “may not increase for persons with a disability any customarily required security deposit.”

Damage is a separate question, and it stays yours. 765 ILCS 710/1 gives your landlord 30 days (counted from your move-out or the end of your right of possession, whichever falls later), to produce an itemised statement of the damage with paid receipts. Skip that step and the full deposit is due back inside 45 days. Should a court find bad faith, or a flat refusal to itemise, the award doubles the deposit and adds costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.

That rule once reached only buildings of five units or more. Public Act 103-224 deleted the threshold on January 1, 2024, so it now binds every residential landlord in the village, down to the couple letting a townhouse.

Two clocks, neither of them run by the village

Section 28-21 hands out no local deadline, so every clock that matters is a state clock.

A housing charge belongs with the Illinois Department of Human Rights, and 775 ILCS 5/7B-102(A)(1) allows one year, measured from the day the violation was committed or ended. Its investigation target is 100 days, and the section states twice over that missing it costs the Department no jurisdiction. Where the charge is dismissed, 90 days remain to put that decision before the Illinois Human Rights Commission.

The agency is optional, though. Circuit court stays open for two years under 775 ILCS 5/10-102(A)(1); either party can demand a jury, and paragraph (3) removes any need to have filed a charge beforehand. The award list at 775 ILCS 5/8B-104 covers actual damages, attorney’s and expert witness fees, and civil penalties reaching $16,000, $42,500 or $70,000.

Should the landlord push back at you for asking (a threat, an unannounced inspection, pressure to let it go), 775 ILCS 5/3-105.1 treats that as its own violation.

No card to buy, and who to call instead

No Illinois agency and no Bolingbrook office keeps a roster of emotional support animals. The village recognises no certificate, for the simple reason that Chapter 28 says nothing about animals and Chapter 26 says nothing either. An ID card bought online sells a status Illinois law never created.

The thing a landlord cannot brush aside is a letter from a licensed clinician who treats you and can say how the animal helps with your condition. Under 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(c) a housing provider may ask for information establishing that you are eligible for a benefit reserved for people with disabilities. That letter supplies the answer.

For help from a Bolingbrook address: South Suburban Housing Center’s service area expressly includes northeastern Will County. Prairie State Legal Services covers both halves of town: its Joliet office for Will, its West Suburban office for DuPage. The Illinois Department of Human Rights takes the charge; the Illinois Human Rights Commission decides it.