Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Westland, MI

A city that expects renters to check

Most Michigan cities keep their rental records for their own inspectors. Westland points tenants at them. Its Residential Rental Program tells prospective renters to open the city’s Records Search, choose the Detailed Record Search and then Building Department, type in the address, and look under certificates to see whether the property “has had or has a rental certificate”.

That is worth doing, because a rental dwelling here “shall not be occupied without a Certificate of Compliance”, and the certificate lasts three years.

It is also a habit worth extending. While you are checking the certificate, ask the landlord or leasing office for the pet policy in writing. A policy you have in front of you is a policy an accommodation request can be aimed at; a policy described over the phone tends to change shape once an animal is mentioned.

The same request, made in an email, produces a second useful thing: a dated record that you asked before you applied. If the tone of the conversation changes after that, you have the before and the after, which is exactly what an investigator or a fair housing centre will ask you for.

38.7 percent of Westland rents

13,921 of the city’s 35,932 occupied homes are rented, the highest renter share of any Wayne County suburb in Michigan’s top twenty. Median gross rent is $1,158.

The stock is mixed: large apartment complexes with corporate policies, duplexes, and single-family houses let by individuals. Which of those you are dealing with changes who you send the request to, not what the request says.

It also changes how long an answer takes. A single owner can decide in an afternoon; a complex may route the request to a regional office and take a fortnight. Neither timescale changes your deadline, so ask early enough that a slow answer is still an answer inside the window you have.

The rule, and the sentence to quote

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.” 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(a) is the federal equivalent.

Note the word policies. When a complex says its pet rule is set centrally and cannot be changed, it has described the exact thing the statute contemplates changing. The right response is not to argue with the leasing agent; it is to ask who has authority to decide accommodation requests and to send it there in writing.

If the answer is still no, MCL 37.1102(2) puts the burden of the excuse on the landlord: the accommodation is required “unless the person demonstrates that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship.”

The city’s fees are not your fees

Westland charges for rental registration and inspection: $125 for a single family dwelling, $175 for a duplex, $250 for a quadplex, $54 per apartment in a multi-family building, plus $75 for each inspector visit after the second and $75 if the requester fails to show.

Those are the landlord’s costs of being allowed to let the property. They are not charges a tenant can be asked to cover, and they have nothing to do with an animal.

What a landlord may collect from you is capped: MCL 554.602 limits total deposits to one and a half months’ rent (about $1,737 here), and MCL 554.601(d) sweeps a refundable pet deposit into that same ceiling by defining 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.”

For an approved assistance animal the pet portion should not be charged at all, because MCL 37.1502(1)(b) bars discrimination in the terms and conditions of a tenancy because of disability. Monthly pet rent is unregulated in Michigan and by the city: a price for a pet, and for an assistance animal a charge the accommodation duty answers.

Vouchers and animals, together

Westland runs its own voucher programme. The Housing Commission sets policy and budget for it, and the day-to-day administration sits with the city’s Housing and Community Development department.

If you hold a voucher and need an accommodation, you are relying on two different protections at once. The accommodation duty runs against the landlord whoever pays the rent. And source of income now sits among the characteristics the Michigan Department of Civil Rights lists as protected, so a landlord who backs away once the voucher is mentioned has a second problem.

Practically: keep the two threads separate in your correspondence so it stays clear which refusal was which, but raise both with MDCR if both happened. The department takes one complaint that can carry more than one basis.

The distinction is worth keeping clean for a second reason. A refusal aimed at a voucher and a refusal aimed at an animal often arrive in the same sentence, “we don’t do that here”, and the investigator’s job is easier when your file shows what was said, to whom, and on what date. Two short notes written the same evening are worth more than one long account written three months later.

Documentation that holds up

A letter from a licensed professional who has actually evaluated you, which names a real condition and says what the animal does about it.

Michigan has case law on the failure mode. In Riverbrook v Fabode the Court of Appeals looked at a letter written after a single telephone call, no records reviewed, no testing, no counselling, a condition that had not been diagnosed, nothing about what the dog did, and refused to treat it as establishing anything on its own. Then the Michigan Supreme Court held, on 29 November 2022, that neither the Fair Housing Act nor MCL 37.1506a(1)(b) requires expert-witness testimony.

Between the two, the standard is realistic and it is not satisfied by anything bought online. Michigan’s own voluntary identification programme: for trained service animals, confers no legal privileges or protections by the Department of Civil Rights’ own account, and being told by a landlord to register is something the department says to complain about.

Where to go, and the clock

Michigan Department of Civil Rights: 1-800-482-3604, online portal, or a Zoom appointment through Virtual Intake. 180 days from the refusal. Beyond that, without federal jurisdiction, MDCR points to state court and a three-year window; MCL 37.1606(2) puts venue in Wayne County Circuit Court or wherever the landlord has its principal place of business.

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

Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit: (313) 963-1274, covering Wayne County and naming Westland in its service area, with its own investigators.

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

Nothing in Michigan law gives a landlord a deadline to reply to you, so the only clock running is yours. Check the certificate, get the policy in writing, make the request in writing, and date all three.