Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Macomb Township, MI

2,735 renter households

Macomb Township has 31,878 occupied homes and 2,735 of them are rented. At 8.6 percent, that is the lowest renter share of any municipality in Michigan’s twenty largest, a third of the statewide figure of 26.8 percent.

Median gross rent is $1,379, which sets the deposit ceiling at roughly $2,069.

The number tells you something about the market, not about your rights. But it does explain the two features that make an accommodation request here different: what you rent is usually a house or a condominium unit in a subdivision built for owners, and the rules over it are often written by an association rather than by your landlord.

Two rulebooks, one duty

Michigan’s disability act does not treat associations as outside the system. MCL 37.1501(e) defines “real property” for the housing article to include “a building, structure, mobile home, real estate, land, mobile home park, trailer park, tenement, leasehold, or an interest in a real estate cooperative or condominium.”

So when a landlord says the subdivision or condominium association will not allow the animal, they have identified which rule needs an exception. MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) is the provision that asks for it: it is 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.”

Write to both, the same day, in the same words. Keep both replies. Either refusal is a refusal, and either one starts the 180-day clock.

There is no township office to appeal to

Macomb Township is governed by a board of trustees and a supervisor. It publishes no civil rights or human relations body, and there is no local ordinance under which to complain.

That is a structural fact about townships rather than a gap in your protection. The enforcement route is the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, on 1-800-482-3604, by online portal, or through a Zoom appointment via Virtual Intake: with 180 days from the refusal. The Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit covers Macomb County and investigates independently.

Being the only renter on the street

In a subdivision of owner-occupiers, a request about an animal has an audience. Neighbours notice; boards hear about it; and complaints get passed to a landlord as though they settled something.

They do not. What can limit an accommodation is narrow and specific:

• a direct threat to the health or safety of others, the limit preserved by 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d), judged on what this animal has actually done; or
• an undue hardship, which MCL 37.1102(2) requires the housing provider to demonstrate. The accommodation is required “unless the person demonstrates” it.

A neighbour’s dislike is neither. Practical advice all the same: deal with genuine nuisance quickly and visibly, keep your own dated notes, and ask for any complaint being relied on to be put in writing. A written complaint can be answered, and often turns out to be one household rather than the street. A rumour circulates, grows, and cannot be replied to at all.

The owner-occupied exception is narrower than people think

Someone will tell you that small landlords are exempt. Read MCL 37.1503 before believing it: it excepts renting a housing accommodation in a building containing accommodations for not more than two families, where the owner or a member of their immediate family lives in one of them, and renting a room in a dwelling the lessor occupies. “Immediate family” is defined at MCL 37.1501(b) as a spouse, parent, child or sibling.

A single-family house let to a tenant, which is most of what is rented in this township, is not inside that exception.

Deposits, and the association’s separate bill

Michigan caps everything a landlord holds at one and a half months’ rent (MCL 554.602) (about $2,069 here), and MCL 554.601(d) pulls a refundable pet deposit into that same total.

A condominium or subdivision association may separately bill the owner for a pet under its governing documents. Treat that as part of the cost of owning the unit, not as a sum that can be passed through to you on top of the statutory ceiling: the cap in MCL 554.602 governs what a tenant hands over, whatever the landlord’s own outgoings look like.

And where the animal is an approved assistance animal, the pet component comes off entirely, because MCL 37.1502(1)(b) forbids differences in the terms, conditions or privileges of a real estate transaction that trace back to a disability.

One more practical point in a market of individually owned houses: get the final position in writing even when it is a yes. Owners here sell, and the next owner inherits the tenancy without inheriting the conversation.

What to send an individual owner

A short written request, plus a letter from a licensed professional who has evaluated you, naming the condition and explaining what the animal does.

Michigan has appellate guidance on both ends of that standard. The Court of Appeals in Riverbrook v Fabode would not accept a letter resting on one telephone call, no records and no testing, for a condition that had not yet been diagnosed. The Supreme Court’s November 2022 order then rejected the opposite extreme: no expert witness is demanded by the federal act or by MCL 37.1506a(1)(b).

Nothing bought online counts. Michigan’s only official identification programme covers trained service animals, and the Department of Civil Rights says it carries no legal privileges or protections and that a landlord demanding it is something to complain about.

If the atmosphere changes after you ask

This is the risk that matters most in a small rental market, and Michigan addresses it directly.

MCL 37.1602(a) makes it unlawful to “[r]etaliate or discriminate against a person because the person has opposed a violation of this act, or because the person has made a charge, filed a complaint, testified, assisted, or participated in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this act.”

MCL 37.1602(f) goes further, prohibiting anyone from “[c]oerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with any person in the exercise or enjoyment of, or on account of his or her having aided or encouraged any other person in the exercise or enjoyment of, any right granted or protected by article 5”, article 5 being the housing article.

So a lease that suddenly will not be renewed, a rent increase that arrives the week after your request, or pressure through the association is its own potential violation. Keep the dates. The sequence is the evidence.

The numbers to keep

180 days to reach the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, measured from the refusal. One year for HUD, set by 24 C.F.R. § 103.35. And three years for a state court claim, which is where the department directs complaints that arrive too late for it and carry no federal jurisdiction.

(313) 963-1274, Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit, covering Macomb County. (888) 783-8190, Lakeshore Legal Aid, for free civil legal help.

Nothing in Michigan law requires a landlord or an association to answer you by any date at all. That asymmetry is the reason to put the request in writing on the day you decide to make it.