# ESA Letter in Farmington Hills, MI: Two Kinds of Renter

> The city inspects single-family rentals every three years and not apartments. Either way the assistance-animal question is answered by state law, not the city.

- Source: https://supportanimal.com/blog/michigan-emotional-support-animal/farmington-hills/
- Publisher: Support Animal (supportanimal.com)
- Updated: 2026-08-17
- License note: informational content; not legal or medical advice.

## Key facts

- Population: 84,173
- Households renting: 35.3%
- Typical pet deposit (as a pet): Capped: 1.5 months' rent
- Typical pet rent (as a pet): Varies by building
- Breed/weight limits common: yes
- Pet fees, deposits, and breed limits with a valid ESA letter: none (FHA reasonable accommodation)

## One city, two rental worlds

Farmington Hills rents 12,538 of its 35,529 occupied homes: **35.3
percent**, notably higher than the rest of its county's big suburbs: Troy
is 26.7 percent, Rochester Hills 23.3.

Those renters live in two different systems.

If you rent a **house**, the city knows about it. Farmington Hills has
adopted a mandatory **Single-Family Rental Dwelling Registration, Safety
and Maintenance Inspection Program**, which requires registration of any
single-family rental in the city and an inspection **once every three
years**: exterior conditions, fire safety and egress, structural,
electrical, health, infestation, sanitation, accumulated trash.

If you rent an **apartment**, you are outside that programme, and your pet
rule comes from a management company's policy manual rather than from an
owner's lease.

Neither system decides your accommodation. Both are about buildings; the
animal question is about rules.

## The rule the request is aimed at

MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) makes it unlawful in a real estate transaction to
"[r]efuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices,
or services, when the accommodations may be necessary to afford the person
with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy residential real
property." The federal twin is 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(a).

Whether the rule sits in a two-page lease or a forty-page community
handbook makes no difference to that sentence. What changes is who you send
the request to, and in a managed community, the person who answers the
door is rarely the person who decides.

Ask, in writing: **who reviews accommodation requests?** Then send it
there.

## "Pets allowed — $500 pet fee, $35 a month"

This is the Farmington Hills version of a refusal, and it is easy to
mistake for a yes.

For a pet, those are prices, and Michigan does not regulate them. For an
**approved assistance animal** they are the refusal wearing a price tag.
The animal is not a pet, so the pet tariff has nothing to attach to; and
money demanded because of the animal is money demanded because of the
disability, which is what MCL 37.1502(1)(b) forbids in the "terms,
conditions, or privileges" of a real estate transaction.

So the request is not "may I pay the pet fee". It is that the pet fee and
the pet rent do not apply, because the animal is not a pet. Ask for the
waiver in writing, and treat a refusal to waive as a refusal to
accommodate, because that is what it is.

## Where the deposit cap does and does not help

Michigan's ceiling is one and a half months' rent (MCL 554.602), which at
the city's $1,551 median is about **$2,327**, and it catches a refundable
pet deposit through the definition in MCL 554.601(d).

Be honest about how much that helps here: at Farmington Hills rents, a
landlord can take a full month's deposit and a $500 pet deposit and still
be comfortably under the cap. Unlike Flint or Kalamazoo, the arithmetic
will rarely win the argument for you.

What does the work instead is the accommodation duty, plus MCL 37.1102(2),
which requires the accommodation "unless the person demonstrates that the
accommodation would impose an undue hardship": a demonstration the
provider has to make, not a doubt they can express.

## Breed restrictions in a managed community

Community handbooks in this part of Oakland County commonly carry breed
lists and weight caps, and they are usually applied without much thought
because they came from an insurer or a template.

A breed list can stand as a general pet policy. It cannot end an
accommodation request on its own, because the statute is written about
exactly this kind of rule. What can end a specific request is evidence
about **this** animal: a direct threat to the health or safety of others,
which 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d) preserves as a limit, or a demonstrated undue
hardship.

If the answer you get is the list, ask what about this animal makes it
unsuitable. The question is not rhetorical. It is the question the law
asks.

Where the true source is an insurance policy, say so back to them and ask
for the clause. Insurers vary, policies get renewed on different terms
every year, and a surprising number of "our insurer won't allow it"
refusals dissolve when someone actually checks. If the clause is real, that
is the beginning of a hardship argument the landlord has to make properly,
not the end of your request.

## Documentation, and the Michigan cases behind it

What works is straightforward: a clinician who is licensed, who has seen
you, who can name the condition, and who explains the animal's role in
managing it.

Michigan has appellate authority on both edges of that. In *Riverbrook v
Fabode* the Court of Appeals refused to treat a letter as self-proving
where the counsellor had spoken to the tenant once by telephone, reviewed
no records, run no testing and provided no counselling. And the Michigan
Supreme Court, on 29 November 2022, held that neither the federal Fair
Housing Act nor MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) requires expert-witness testimony.

Nothing bought online sits inside that. Michigan's only official
identification programme (the Department of Civil Rights' voluntary scheme
for **trained service animals**) carries no legal privileges or
protections by the department's own account, and being told by a landlord
to register is something MDCR says to complain about.

## If you rent a house here

Two small advantages worth using.

Your landlord is registered with the city and has been inspected within the
last three years, which means they are used to formal correspondence about
the property and have a file on it.

And the inspection record is about condition, so a landlord who says an
animal will damage the property has a recent, written baseline to point at,
which cuts both ways. Ask what specifically the concern is. A worry with
a document behind it can usually be met with an agreement about damage,
which costs you nothing you did not already owe under MCL 554.607.

## The routes, and the deadline

**Michigan Department of Civil Rights**: 1-800-482-3604, online portal, or
a Zoom appointment through Virtual Intake. **180 days** from the refusal.
Beyond it, where no federal jurisdiction applies, the department points to
state court on a three-year limit, with MCL 37.1606(2) fixing venue in
Oakland County or wherever the landlord's principal place of business sits.

**HUD**. One year, under 24 C.F.R. § 103.35.

**Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit**: (313) 963-1274; it covers
Oakland County, names Farmington Hills in its service area, and
investigates rather than only advising.

**Legal Aid and Defender Association**, civil legal services across Wayne,
Oakland and Macomb.

No Michigan statute gives a management company a deadline to answer you.
Date the request, chase once, and count from the refusal.

One last practical note for a city split between houses and complexes: keep
whichever handbook, lease addendum or policy page the pet rule came from.
Managed communities revise those documents between leasing seasons, and the
version that was in force when you asked is the one your complaint is
about. A screenshot on the day you ask is worth more than an argument about
what the policy used to say.

## What Farmington Hills landlords can and cannot do

**Cannot:**
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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.
- Cannot 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).
- Cannot 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).
- Cannot 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.

**Can:**
- Must 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.
- May 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.
- Is 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.
- Is 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".

## How to get an ESA letter in Farmington Hills

1. **Check that you qualify**, Answer a short screening about how your condition affects daily life in Farmington Hills. No diagnosis paperwork needed up front. (About 5 minutes: free)
2. **Connect with a licensed professional**, You are matched with a provider licensed for Michigan clients who reviews your situation in a telehealth evaluation. (Telehealth evaluation)
3. **Complete your evaluation**, The professional evaluates whether an emotional support animal alleviates symptoms of a condition recognized in the DSM-5. Honest evaluations, not everyone qualifies. (Most of Our Applicants Qualify)
4. **Receive your signed letter**, Your letter arrives on the professional's letterhead with their license number: the documentation Michigan landlords may lawfully request. (Typically within days of approval)
5. **Send it to your landlord**, Submit the letter with a short reasonable-accommodation request. Pet fees, pet deposits, and breed limits no longer apply to your animal in Farmington Hills. (Protection under FHA + state law)

## Conditions that can qualify for an ESA

No fixed government list exists. A licensed professional evaluates whether an animal alleviates symptoms of a DSM-5-recognized condition, commonly:

- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Major depressive disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Panic disorder
- Social anxiety disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Bipolar disorder
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Phobias with housing impact
- Chronic stress affecting daily function

## Housing help in Farmington Hills

- [City of Farmington Hills rental inspection programme](https://www.fhgov.com/department-and-services/planning-and-community-development/rental-inspection/) (city agency)
- [Michigan Department of Civil Rights](https://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/enforcement/fair-housing) (state agency)
- [Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit](https://www.fairhousingdetroit.org/) (fair housing)
- [Legal Aid and Defender Association](https://www.ladadetroit.org/) (legal aid)
- [Michigan Department of Civil Rights, service animals](https://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/divisions/ada-compliance/service-animals) (state agency)
- [Michigan Legal Help, housing](https://michiganlegalhelp.org/self-help-tools/housing) (legal aid)

## Frequently asked questions

### Does Farmington Hills inspect my apartment?

Probably not. The city's mandatory registration and inspection programme is a Single-Family Rental Dwelling programme: it requires registration of any single-family rental dwelling in the city and inspection once every three years, with the inspection focused on exterior conditions, fire safety and egress, structural, electrical, health, infestation and sanitation issues. Apartment communities are outside it. Either way the programme is about the building's condition; whether a pet rule has to give way for an assistance animal is governed by MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) and 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(a).

### My complex allows pets: for a fee. Does that solve it?

It solves it for a pet. For an approved assistance animal a fee is not a compromise: the animal is not a pet, so the pet price list does not apply to it, and money attached to the animal is money attached to the disability. MCL 37.1502(1)(b) forbids exactly that kind of differential in the terms, conditions or privileges of a real estate transaction. The accommodation is the removal of the rule and its associated charge, not permission to pay it. Ask for the fee to be waived in writing as part of the accommodation, and keep the reply, because a refusal to waive is as much a refusal as a refusal to allow.

### How much can a Farmington Hills landlord hold in deposits?

One and a half months' rent in total under MCL 554.602 (about $2,327 at the city's $1,551 median gross rent), and a refundable pet deposit counts inside that ceiling under MCL 554.601(d), which defines a security deposit to include any amount "returnable to the tenant on condition of return of the rental unit by the tenant in condition as required by the rental agreement". At rents this high the cap rarely binds, so the argument against a pet deposit for an assistance animal is the accommodation duty rather than the arithmetic.

### Who decides an accommodation request in a managed community?

Someone above the leasing office, usually. Ask, in writing, who reviews accommodation requests and send it there. That question does two useful things: it gets the request in front of a person with authority, and it produces a dated record that you asked. If the answer is a refusal, the follow-up under MCL 37.1102(2) is what undue hardship the accommodation would impose, because the statute requires the accommodation "unless the person demonstrates" that hardship. It is not for the tenant to prove the absence of one.

### Is a breed restriction lawful in Farmington Hills?

A breed restriction is a rule, and rules are what the accommodation duty operates on. It can stand as a general policy; it cannot automatically defeat a request for an assistance animal, because MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) requires reasonable accommodations in "rules, policies, practices, or services" where necessary to give a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy residential real property. What can defeat a specific request is evidence about this animal: a direct threat to the health or safety of others under 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d), or a demonstrated undue hardship.

### What documentation should I provide?

A letter from a licensed professional who has evaluated you, naming a real condition and describing what the animal does about it. Michigan case law explains why the details matter: in Riverbrook v Fabode the Court of Appeals declined to treat a letter as self-proving where the writer had spoken to the tenant once by telephone, reviewed no records and conducted no testing. The Michigan Supreme Court then held that neither the Fair Housing Act nor MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) requires expert-witness testimony. No registration, certificate or ID card is required or recognised.

### How long do I have after a refusal?

180 days to file with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, on 1-800-482-3604, counted from the refusal. Where a complaint is older than that and carries no federal jurisdiction, MDCR points to state court and a three-year window; MCL 37.1606(2) puts venue in the circuit court for the county where the violation occurred, Oakland County here, or where the landlord has its principal place of business. HUD's window is one year under 24 C.F.R. § 103.35.

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Get evaluated by a licensed provider: https://my.supportanimal.com/qualify?sa_source=blog&sa_medium=blog&sa_campaign=esa-guides&sa_content=markdown&ref=blog&sa_term=michigan-emotional-support-animal%2Ffarmington-hills