# ESA Letter in Rochester Hills, MI: Yes, With Conditions

> In Michigan's second most expensive rental market the answer is rarely a flat no. It is a yes with an insurance rider attached. Here is how the law reads that.

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

## Key facts

- Population: 78,330
- Households renting: 23.3%
- 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)

## An expensive market with few renters

Rochester Hills rents 6,880 of its 29,486 occupied homes. **23.3 percent**,
one of the lowest shares in Michigan's twenty largest municipalities. Median
gross rent is **$1,644**, second only to Ann Arbor's $1,649.

That combination shapes the answers people get here. A flat refusal is
uncommon. What arrives instead is a yes with conditions: an added insurance
requirement, a liability rider, a restriction on which parts of the
property the animal may use, or a request to meet the animal before
anything is confirmed.

Conditions are the subject of this page, because they are easy to accept
without noticing that they are the refusal in another form.

## Conditions are terms, and terms are covered

Two provisions do the work.

MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) requires a housing provider not 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."

And MCL 37.1502(1)(b) makes it unlawful to "[d]iscriminate against a person
in the terms, conditions, or privileges of a real estate transaction or in
the furnishing of facilities or services in connection with a real estate
transaction" on the basis of disability.

The second one is the test for a condition. **Does this condition exist for
everybody, or did it appear because your animal did?**

## The insurance rider

The most common Rochester Hills version. "We can approve the animal, but
you'll need to carry renter's insurance with an animal liability
endorsement."

One question settles it: does the community require that of every resident,
or only of residents with animals? Ask in writing and keep the reply.

If the requirement is general (every tenant carries renter's insurance, no
exceptions), you are being treated like everyone else, and that is not
discrimination.

If it appears only because of your animal, it is a term imposed because of
the animal, and therefore because of the disability. In that case say so
plainly and ask for the requirement to be waived as part of the
accommodation. Do not simply refuse; ask, in writing, and let the refusal
be theirs.

## Amenity restrictions

Second most common: the animal is approved, but not in the clubhouse, the
gym corridor, the pool enclosure or the lift nearest reception.

Distinguish two things again. A rule keeping **all** animals out of a pool
enclosure exists independently of you and applies to everyone with an
animal. A rule invented for your animal (or one that keeps an assistance
animal out of areas other residents' pets may use) is a difference in the
"privileges" of your tenancy.

Ask for the rule as it existed before your request. If it cannot be
produced, that tells you which kind you are dealing with.

It is worth being reasonable about the genuinely general ones. Nobody is
served by a fight over a pool enclosure that has excluded every animal
since the building opened. The conditions to push back on are the ones that
did not exist last month, or that apply to your animal and to no other
resident's.

## "Can we meet the dog?"

Nothing in the accommodation framework entitles a provider to inspect an
animal as a condition of deciding. What they may seek is verification of
the disability, of the accommodation, and of the connection between them.

You can still agree to a meeting if you want to, and in a small, expensive
market it often resolves things faster than correspondence. What matters is
the basis of whatever decision follows. A provider may lawfully rely on a
demonstrated **undue hardship** under MCL 37.1102(2), or on a **direct
threat** to health or safety within 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d). A declined
introduction is neither of those, so if that is what the refusal turns on,
get the reason in writing and treat it as the refusal to complain about.

## Deposits, for completeness

Michigan caps everything held at one and a half months' rent: MCL 554.602:
about **$2,466** here, and MCL 554.601(d) counts a refundable pet deposit
inside it.

At the top of the state's rent range that cap is rarely troubled, so treat
it as a check on the arithmetic rather than as leverage. The reason a pet
deposit should not be charged for an approved assistance animal is the
accommodation duty, not the ceiling. And MCL 554.606 means none of the
deposit act's protections can be waived by the lease, however the addendum
is worded.

## When the mood turns after the request

Michigan treats this as a separate wrong, and in a market where a landlord
has other applicants it is worth knowing before you ask rather than after.

**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)** prohibits anyone from "[c]oerce, intimidate, threaten,
or interfere with any person in the exercise or enjoyment of … any right
granted or protected by article 5", article 5 being the housing article.

A renewal that quietly disappears, a fee that appears for the first time, a
sudden interest in inspections: none of those is proof by itself, and all
of them are worth dating. The sequence is what an investigator reads.

Keep it simple. One line per event, written the day it happens, in a
document you control: what was said or sent, by whom, and when. Six months
later that file is the difference between a complaint an investigator can
work with and a recollection they cannot.

## When no answer comes at all

Silence is the third Rochester Hills answer, and it is the one with the
sharpest consequence, because nothing in Michigan law gives a landlord a
period to reply and nothing pauses your own deadline.

Send the request in writing. Follow up once in writing. If nothing comes
back, send a short final note saying you are treating the request as
refused as of that date. That single line gives the Michigan Department of
Civil Rights a clean starting point for the **180 days**.

## The letter, and the two Michigan markers

A licensed professional who has evaluated you, naming the condition, saying
what the animal does about it.

*Riverbrook v Fabode* shows the floor: the Court of Appeals would not
accept a letter built on one telephone call, with nothing read and nothing
tested, for a condition still awaiting diagnosis. The Supreme Court's
November 2022 order shows the ceiling: no expert witness is required by the
federal act, and none by MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) either.

Michigan's voluntary identification programme covers **trained service
animals** only and, on the Department of Civil Rights' own account, confers
no legal privileges or protections, so a demand for registration is not
something to satisfy, it is something to report.

## Numbers and doors

**Michigan Department of Civil Rights**: 1-800-482-3604, online portal, or
Virtual Intake by Zoom. **180 days** from the refusal, with a three-year
state court route beyond it where no federal jurisdiction applies.

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

**Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit**, (313) 963-1274, covering
Oakland County and naming Rochester Hills in its service area.

**Legal Aid and Defender Association**, civil legal services for Wayne,
Oakland and Macomb residents who cannot afford an attorney.

## What Rochester 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 Rochester Hills

1. **Check that you qualify**, Answer a short screening about how your condition affects daily life in Rochester 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 Rochester 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 Rochester Hills

- [Michigan Department of Civil Rights](https://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/enforcement/fair-housing) (state agency)
- [Michigan Department of Civil Rights, how to file](https://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/enforcement/investigation/jurisdiction) (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

### My community will allow the animal if I buy extra liability insurance. Is that lawful?

It depends on who else has to buy it. A requirement applied to every tenant is a term of the tenancy generally; a requirement that appears only because you have an assistance animal is a difference in the terms, conditions or privileges of the tenancy traceable to your disability, which MCL 37.1502(1)(b) prohibits. Ask, in writing, whether the requirement applies to all residents or only to residents with animals, and keep the answer. If it is the latter, say that you are asking for it to be waived as part of the accommodation under MCL 37.1506a(1)(b).

### They have said yes but want to keep the animal out of the clubhouse and pool area. Can they?

Restrictions of general application (rules that keep all animals out of a swimming pool enclosure, for instance) are different from restrictions invented for your animal. The test is whether the condition is imposed because of the disability. Where an assistance animal is being excluded from parts of the property other residents' animals may use, or from areas you need to use to enjoy your tenancy, that is a term of the tenancy the accommodation duty reaches. Ask for the rule in writing and check whether it exists independently of your request.

### Can they insist on meeting the animal before deciding?

Nothing in the accommodation framework entitles a housing provider to inspect an animal as a condition of deciding. Verification runs to your disability, the accommodation you need, and the connection between them. You may agree to a meeting voluntarily, and often that settles a nervous manager quickly. What matters is the basis of the decision that follows. Undue hardship, demonstrated by the provider under MCL 37.1102(2), and a direct threat to health or safety within 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d), are lawful grounds. A declined introduction is not one, so a refusal resting on it is a refusal worth complaining about.

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

One and a half months' rent in total under MCL 554.602: roughly $2,466 at the city's $1,644 median gross rent, the second highest in Michigan's top twenty. A refundable pet deposit counts inside that ceiling under MCL 554.601(d). At these rents the cap is unlikely to be exceeded, so treat it as a check on the arithmetic; the reason a pet deposit should not be charged for an approved assistance animal is the accommodation duty, not the ceiling.

### What if the landlord's answer simply never comes?

Treat a long silence as the refusal it functions as, and date it. No Michigan statute gives a housing provider a period in which to answer an accommodation request, and nothing pauses the Michigan Department of Civil Rights' 180-day window while you wait. Send the request in writing, follow up once in writing, and if nothing comes back, say in a final short note that you are treating the request as refused as of that date. That sentence gives an investigator a clean starting point.

### Does anything protect me if the landlord reacts badly to the request?

Yes, and it is a separate violation. 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", and MCL 37.1602(f) prohibits coercing, intimidating, threatening or interfering with a person exercising a right protected by article 5: the housing article. A non-renewal or a sudden change in treatment after a request is worth documenting with dates.

### What documentation is expected here?

A letter from a licensed professional who has evaluated you, naming the condition and explaining the animal's role. Michigan's Court of Appeals in Riverbrook v Fabode would not accept a letter based on a single telephone call with no records reviewed and no testing, for a condition that had not been diagnosed; the Michigan Supreme Court then held on 29 November 2022 that neither the Fair Housing Act nor MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) requires expert-witness testimony. No registry helps: Michigan's voluntary identification programme is for trained service animals and confers no legal privileges or protections.

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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%2Frochester-hills