Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Leawood, KS

Nine percent

Leawood has 1,190 renting households out of 13,272 occupied homes, 9.0 percent on the 2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate.

That is the lowest renter share of any city on this site. Kansas as a whole is 32.8 percent; Dell Rapids, South Dakota, the previous low, is 17.7 percent. Leawood is under ten.

Median gross rent is $1,983, the highest in Kansas and eighty-seven percent above the $1,060 state median. The 2024 Census estimate puts the city at 34,013, thirteenth in Kansas.

A market that small and that expensive is not made of apartment communities. Leawood rentals are largely single-family houses let by their owners, which puts one particular Kansas exemption at the front of almost every accommodation question here.

K.S.A. 44-1018(b)(1)

“Nothing in this act, other than the prohibitions against discriminatory advertising … shall apply to: (1) The sale or rental of any single family house by an owner, provided the following conditions are met: (A) The owner does not own or have any interest in more than three single family houses at any one time; and (B) the house is sold or rented without the use of a real estate broker, agent or salesperson or the facilities of any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings.”

Note the “and.” Both conditions, not either.

This is an exemption South Dakota does not have. SDCL 20-13-20’s only carve-out is owner-occupancy in a two-family dwelling; an owner with one rental house in Sioux Falls who lives elsewhere is fully inside the South Dakota act. Kansas exempts up to three houses, but only on condition (B).

Condition (B) is where it usually fails

In practice, condition (A) is often satisfied in Leawood. An owner who moved and kept the house, or who holds two, is inside the three-house limit.

Condition (B) is the one to examine, and it is drawn widely:

• “a real estate broker, agent or salesperson”, the obvious case.
• “or the facilities of any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings”, much broader. A property management company. A listing service run by someone in that business.

So the question is not only “did an agent sign the lease.” It is whether the house was rented through anybody in the business of renting dwellings. In a market where most houses reach tenants through a brokerage or a manager, the answer is frequently no exemption.

No Kansas case construing that phrase was retrieved for this page, so what is stated here is the breadth of the words rather than a holding on where they stop.

The other exemption, for completeness

K.S.A. 44-1018(b)(2) exempts “rooms or units in buildings containing living quarters occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than four families living independently of each other, if the owner actually maintains and occupies one of such living quarters as the owner’s residence.”

That is about a building the owner lives in, and it is generous, four families, against South Dakota’s two. Leawood’s housing stock produces very few (b)(2) questions and a great many (b)(1) ones.

The one rule no exemption reaches

Read the opening words again: “Nothing in this act, other than the prohibitions against discriminatory advertising as provided in subsection (c) of K.S.A. 44-1016…”

K.S.A. 44-1016(c) prohibits any notice, statement, advertisement or application with respect to the sale or rental of real property indicating “any preference, limitation, specification or discrimination based on … disability.” An exempt owner is still bound by it, and a listing that announces no assistance animals is outside the exemption they are relying on.

And the federal Act is a separate question

An exemption in K.S.A. 44-1018 exempts from the Kansas act. 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B) is a federal obligation with federal exemptions, drawn differently.

So when a Leawood owner says the law does not reach them, the sequence is: how many houses, was a broker or a manager used, and then, whatever those answers are, what about the federal Act.

Where the right comes from when the act applies

K.S.A. 44-1016(h)(3)(B), “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 residential real property.”

Charges attached to the animal come off under K.S.A. 44-1016(h)(2).

And note that K.S.A. 58-2550 has no exemptions of this kind. The residential landlord and tenant act’s deposit rules apply to a single-family house let by its owner exactly as they apply to a management company. At Leawood’s $1,983 median, the one-month unfurnished cap is close to two thousand dollars, and the additional half-month pet deposit is available only “if the rental agreement permits the tenant to keep or maintain pets”, which an accommodation animal is not there under.

What 1,190 rentals means

There is no comparable unit to move to. A city where nine percent of households rent, at the highest median in the state, does not have an alternative for a tenant whose landlord refuses.

Which changes what a good outcome looks like. In Wichita a refusal is a reason to look elsewhere. In Leawood the accommodation you obtain from the owner of the house you are in is almost certainly the whole result.

What to establish before the exemption comes up

The exemption question has an answer, and it is usually the landlord who holds it.

How many single family houses do they have an interest in? Was the house let through an agent, a brokerage or a management company? Those two facts decide (b)(1), and neither is something a tenant can work out from the outside.

There is no obligation on a landlord to answer, and pressing for it can sour a relationship you will be living inside. The better order is to make the request well first: an owner who says yes never needs to be asked which statute reaches them.

And ask for the answer in writing if it is given. An owner who says they are exempt has made a statement of fact about their holdings and how the house was let. Recording it costs nothing, and it is the fact a later adviser would otherwise have to establish from scratch.

Which puts the weight on the request itself

The cheapest and strongest route is a clinician who is already treating you, history answers what a single appointment cannot, and the visit is the only cost. Johnson County answers slowly: count on two to four months for a new patient, and expect several of the larger practices to decline housing documentation as a standing rule.

Where that is unavailable, a licensed evaluation is that examination arranged on purpose. Someone licensed decides whether a disability exists and whether this animal answers it, then writes the determination or explains why not.

Against the owner of the house you live in, in a city with a thousand rentals, the exemption argument may never be the one that matters. The assessment always is.