Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Camden, NJ

A renter’s city

Renters occupy 16,025 of Camden’s 24,443 occupied homes. Census Bureau five-year estimates covering 2020 to 2024 put the renter share at 65.6 percent. Statewide the figure is 36.2 percent.

Keep the names straight, because the law here does not care about the confusion but landlords’ letters sometimes do. Camden the city and Camden the county are separate things. The county also contains Cherry Hill, where 23.5 percent of households rent. Two municipalities, one county, forty-two points apart, governed by exactly the same statute and the same regulation.

Camden’s rental stock runs from owner-occupied two- and three-family houses to managed buildings to a substantial amount of publicly assisted housing. Each of those raises a slightly different legal question when a tenant asks to keep an emotional support animal, and this page takes them in that order.

Subsidised housing is the stronger position, not the weaker one

Tenants in assisted housing often assume they have fewer rights than a market renter. New Jersey’s statute says the opposite.

N.J.S.A. 10:5-4 declares it a civil right to obtain “all the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges” of a “publicly assisted housing accommodation” without discrimination on the basis of disability. N.J.S.A. 10:5-9.1 then puts enforcement of that in one named place: the Division on Civil Rights “shall enforce the laws of this State against unlawful discrimination in housing built with, or leased with the assistance of, public funds or public assistance.”

The category is wider than it sounds. N.J.S.A. 10:5-5(m) defines a publicly assisted housing accommodation to include not only housing built with public funds but “all housing financed in whole or in part by a loan … the repayment of which is guaranteed or insured by the federal government or any agency thereof.” Federally insured financing is common. A building that looks exempt for some other reason may not be exempt at all once that is taken into account.

Where the duty to accommodate actually sits

The statute readers are usually pointed to does less work than expected. Under N.J.S.A. 10:5-12(g)(2) it is unlawful to discriminate on the basis of disability “in the terms, conditions, or privileges of the sale, rental, or lease of any real property.” That forbids unequal treatment. It imposes no duty to bend a policy for anyone, and across the whole of 10:5-12 the words “dog” and “animal” appear zero times.

The duty is regulatory. N.J.A.C. 13:13-3.4(f)(2), a Division on Civil Rights rule, makes it unlawful to “refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services … when such accommodations or modifications may be necessary to afford a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling, including public and common areas.” A readoption took effect on 13 October 2025 and carries the chapter through to 13 October 2032.

Players Place II Condominium Ass’n, Inc. v. K.P., 256 N.J. 472, decided unanimously on 13 March 2024, tied support animal requests to that rule specifically. The tenant’s showing is a disability plus a need. From there “housing providers … have the burden to prove the requested accommodation is unreasonable,” measured against whether the animal would fundamentally alter operations or impose an undue financial or administrative burden.

And on the question a Camden landlord is most likely to ask first: “Whether the animal has been trained is not a relevant consideration.”

The exemption hidden inside a definition

New Jersey does not put its housing exemptions in a section headed “exemptions.” They sit inside N.J.S.A. 10:5-5(n), the definition of “real property,” which excludes the rental of “a single apartment or flat in a two-family dwelling, the other occupancy unit of which is occupied by the owner as a residence.”

Two- and three-family houses with the owner living in one unit are ordinary in this city, so that language gets quoted at tenants. Read the whole sentence before accepting it. It opens with “except as to publicly assisted housing accommodations”, the category described above. And the exclusion covers a two-family dwelling, not a three-family one.

The security deposit rules carry a related caveat. N.J.S.A. 46:8-26 keeps the Security Deposit Act away from owner-occupied premises of not more than two rental units unless the tenant gives 30 days’ written notice invoking it. That notice is worth serving, because what it switches on is substantial: under N.J.S.A. 46:8-19 the deposit “shall continue to be the property of the person making such deposit” and must be held in trust, and under N.J.S.A. 46:8-21.1 a tenant who has to sue for a wrongfully withheld deposit recovers “double the amount of said moneys, together with full costs.”

What the animal may not cost you

The Division on Civil Rights states in its ESA fact sheet that a housing provider “cannot require you to pay an additional security deposit or pet fee, or obtain additional renter’s insurance, in exchange for allowing you to keep an ESA,” while adding that the provider “may require you to pay for any actual damage the animal causes.”

Attribute that carefully. What the fact sheet carries is the authority of the enforcing agency, not the force of a promulgated rule, and the reason it is worth citing at all is that the Supreme Court took the Division’s side in 2024 and quoted the sheet. No New Jersey statute on pet fees or pet rent exists to fall back on. And the statutory fee protection that does exist in New Jersey covers service and guide dogs, defined by training. It is not available for an emotional support animal, and reaching for it weakens an otherwise sound claim.

Be equally careful about the ceiling. The same fact sheet says that “unlike service or guide animals, ESAs are not automatically exempt from a housing provider’s no-pet policies.” A Camden landlord who refuses is not automatically in the wrong. What the refusal has to survive is an individualised assessment, with the burden on the landlord.

The practical move is a sequencing one. Ask for the pet charge to be removed when the accommodation is granted, rather than paying it and asking for it back later.

No city office. No county office either.

This was checked against the rosters, not assumed.

The City of Camden’s own boards and commissions listing names twelve bodies: the Alcohol & Beverage Commission, the Affirmative Action Review Council, the African-American Advisory Board, the Arts Cultural and Heritage Commission, the Redevelopment Agency, Historic Preservation, the Housing Authority Commission, the Parking Authority Commission, the Planning Board, Shade Tree, Veterans Advisory and Zoning. None is a civil rights or human relations commission. The Affirmative Action Review Council’s published job is to evaluate and monitor developers and contractors and recommend to City Council, procurement compliance, not complaint intake.

Camden County publishes 34 boards, committees and commissions. There is no human relations commission among them.

None of that is a Camden peculiarity. N.J.S.A. 10:5-10 allows a municipal civil rights commission to foster “good will, cooperation and conciliation,” to recommend policy and to educate, and stops there. Under 10:5-8(c) the power to “receive, investigate, and act upon complaints” sits with the Division. HUD’s roster of certified fair housing agencies tells the same story: one entry for this state, at state level, with nothing beneath it.

The clock, and what a win is actually worth

N.J.S.A. 10:5-18 gives 180 days from the act of discrimination. HUD gives a year, 42 U.S.C. § 3610(a)(1)(A)(i), and the bridge between them is a New Jersey statute rather than a federal one: N.J.S.A. 10:5-9.2 asks that the LAD be construed to preserve the Division’s standing as a “certified agency” under the Federal Fair Housing Amendments Act. A Camden tenant past six months should still make the federal call.

On remedies, two corrections are worth having in advance.

Triple damages are not on the table for a housing claim. N.J.S.A. 10:5-17 allows “three-fold damages” only for the economic-discrimination subsections l., m. and n. and the employment subsections r. and t. of 10:5-12. Subsection g. — housing — is not among them.

What is on the table is real. The same section lets a prevailing complainant recover damages “to compensate for emotional distress … to the same extent as is available in common law tort actions.” N.J.S.A. 10:5-27.1 allows the prevailing party a reasonable attorney’s fee. And punitive damages under the LAD escape New Jersey’s statutory cap entirely, the Act being named in the exclusion at N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.14(c).

South Jersey Legal Services covers Camden County from 745 Market Street and takes intake calls on 1-800-496-4570. It lists both civil rights and housing among its practice areas, which is the combination this problem sits in.