Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Potomac, MD

Fewer than 2,500 rented homes

Potomac has 16,316 occupied homes and 2,481 of them are rented. That is 15.2%: the smallest renter share of any of Maryland’s twenty largest places on the Census Bureau’s 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, against 32.4% statewide. Silver Spring, in this county and under this same commission, is 61.7%.

A small renter share is not a small problem. It is a differently shaped one. With little apartment stock, the ordinary Potomac rental is a house let by an individual rather than a company, and Maryland rules turn on exactly that. One of them can switch the accommodation duty off.

The exemption that actually reaches disability

Most fair housing exemptions leave a disability claim untouched. The live-in-landlord rule at § 20-704(a)(2) never reaches disability, so the duty survives a landlord living downstairs.

Section 20-704(a)(1) is different. A single-family dwelling that its owner rents out is exempt, and that exemption is not carved down to other protected classes. Where it applies, Md. Code, State Government § 20-706 does not, which in a place of detached rentals is the first thing worth checking.

Three conditions, and a federal backstop

That exemption is narrow, and it collapses easily: it holds only where the owner used no broker, no agent and no other person “in the business of selling or renting dwellings,” and published no discriminatory advertisement.

Section 20-701(g) defines “in the business” generously: three sales or rentals in twelve months as a principal, two as an agent, or owning an interest in any dwelling designed for five or more families. An owner who handed the house to a realty office used an agent; one who moved three properties last year is in the business without hiring anyone.

And this is a Maryland exemption in a Maryland statute. The federal Fair Housing Act has its own reach and may still cover the tenancy, so an owner who announces “I am exempt” has answered one question of two.

The phrase Maryland’s law uses once

Title 20 of the State Government Article is Maryland’s fair housing law. Across every section of it that carries text, “emotional support” turns up exactly once, and its job there is to keep an animal out. Section 20-706(a)(3)(ii) excludes from “service dog” any dog that “provides only emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship to an individual.” “Assistance animal” and “support animal” appear nowhere in the title.

Your route is § 20-706(b)(4): a person may not “refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services when the accommodations may be necessary to afford an individual with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.” It never mentions animals or training. It regulates rules — and a handwritten “no pets” line in a private lease is a rule. Two questions settle the matter: are you within the disability definition at § 20-701(b), and is this animal what makes equal enjoyment of the home possible.

Two provisions that sound like the answer

Take § 20-706(d) first. Someone handling a service dog is “exempt from any provision in a lease or rental agreement prohibiting the keeping of dogs” and “may not be required to pay any additional rent or fee.” Perfect words, wrong animal: the definition three clauses earlier already shuts an emotional support animal out, and the General Assembly wrote that exclusion in deliberately in 2023.

Then Human Services § 7-704(c), blunter again: “full and equal access to housing accommodations” for a service animal handler, with no “extra compensation” charged for the animal. Individual training is required there too, by § 7-701(g), so that door is closed as well.

The book the county wrote, houses included

Montgomery County publishes a 77-page Landlord-Tenant Handbook that a landlord must offer every tenant at signing. Page 7:

“Landlords should allow emotional support animals as a reasonable accommodation unless they can prove that the presence of the animal poses an undue hardship. The landlord is entitled to request verification from a doctor/therapist or other licensed or professional person who can document a tenant’s need for such an animal. The landlord is not entitled to ask a person’s particular disability.”

It adds that such an animal is not a pet and cannot be charged pet fees, though damage stays the tenant’s.

Two things support that line, and neither is a Maryland service-dog section: the federal accommodation rule, 24 C.F.R. § 100.204, together with this County’s ban on non-refundable charges. Page 11 sets the ban out, listing “pet fees or deposits” among charges a landlord may not impose — with an exception worth carrying: “In certain condominium communities, these fees are allowed in the by-laws.”

Which money rules a one-house landlord cannot escape

A security deposit reaches no higher than “the equivalent of 1 month’s rent per dwelling unit, regardless of the number of tenants.” Real Property § 8-203(b)(1) sets that ceiling. What counts as a deposit turns on the job the money does, not the line-item name: § 8-203(a)(3) reaches any payment shielding an owner from unpaid rent or damage, so a refundable pet deposit sits under the ceiling rather than above it. To start the tenancy, § 8-208(d)(11) permits nothing past the deposit and one month’s rent, and exceeding the cap costs three times the excess plus fees.

Two rules earn their keep in a house. Under § 8-203(e) the money returns inside 45 days, with interest. Under § 8-203(f), a tenant who gives certified-mail notice 15 days ahead of moving may attend the inspection, and an owner who skips that step loses the right to keep any of the deposit for damage.

Thresholds do appear elsewhere: § 8-213(b)’s $25 application-fee rule stops short of an owner offering four units or fewer at one location.

The county-only pet right a house usually misses

One Maryland statute, Real Property § 8-214, is written for this county alone. It protects a household pet kept by a tenant of 60 or over, “unless specifically prohibited in writing at the time occupancy took place.”

Read the trigger. It speaks to a landlord who offers more than 3 dwelling units at one location or on a single parcel. Let a detached house on its own and that is one unit, so across a neighbourhood of single-family rentals the protection will often never switch on. Where it does, damage remains the tenant’s bill and the owner keeps sensible pet rules. And it is a pet entitlement keyed to age and address, not a disability right, and no substitute for a request.

Filing, and why neither door closes the other

Complaints go to the Montgomery County Office of Human Rights, 21 Maryland Avenue, Suite 330, Rockville: 240-777-8450. Its authority is Chapter 27 of the County Code, Article I, and disability is a listed ground in real estate cases. You have one year, and § 27-7(d) adds the line worth remembering: “Filing with any federal or state agency charged with civil rights enforcement constitutes a filing under this article.” COMAR 14.03.04.10D(3) runs it the other way. Both gates swing.

The State track is the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. Its clock is also a year, set by § 20-1021(a)(2). Intake runs on 410-767-8600; the opening document is a Preliminary Questionnaire. Probable cause is meant to be decided inside 100 days, and 20 days are allowed after a charge to elect court instead. A State suit under § 20-1035 runs two years and can bring actual and punitive damages. Any six-month deadline you read about is a non-housing rule, and COMAR 14.03.01.03C(1) says as much.

Which Potomac, and who meets at the library

Four Maryland places carry this name. Potomac CDP here is not North Potomac CDP next door, not Potomac Heights in Charles County, nor Potomac Park in Allegany. Pick the wrong one and your complaint goes astray. The county is the government here: Potomac is unincorporated, with no mayor, council or code of its own. The nearest thing to a civic voice is the West Montgomery County Citizens Association, which meets at Potomac Library and speaks of the “Potomac subregion.” It is a neighbourhood association, not a housing forum.

What to put in front of an individual owner

Nothing registers an emotional support animal in Maryland: no certificate, tag or ID card has legal force, and no statute creates one. There is no misrepresentation offence either, which is not permission to be casual. A purchased document answers nothing the law asks.

The questions § 20-706(b)(4) asks are clinical: is there a disability under § 20-701(b), and does this animal make the home usable on equal terms. Put the request in writing, ask for an exception to the no-pets term, and attach a letter that is current and written by a professional who assessed you personally. Keep a copy. With an individual owner, that letter is often the whole conversation.