Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Paterson, NJ

Renting is the ordinary case here

Paterson is New Jersey’s third-largest city, with an estimated 160,463 residents on 1 July 2024. Of its 49,865 occupied homes, 36,441 are rented, 73.1 percent, measured against 36.2 percent for the state as a whole on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate.

That gap changes what an animal request looks like in practice. Paterson grew up as a mill city around the Great Falls of the Passaic River, and it kept the housing stock that came with that: block after block of small and mid-sized multifamily buildings, many of them owned by someone who owns one or two.

There is often no compliance department to write to. No standing form, no portal, no manager who has processed a request like yours before. So the work of knowing the rule tends to land on the tenant. Here is the rule.

The duty comes from a regulation, not from the statute

New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination makes it unlawful to discriminate against a person because of disability “in the terms, conditions, or privileges of the sale, rental, or lease of any real property.” That is N.J.S.A. 10:5-12(g)(2), and it is worth reading closely for what it leaves out. There is no accommodation duty in it. The words “dog” and “animal” appear in that section zero times.

The duty sits one level down, in a rule the Division on Civil Rights wrote. N.J.A.C. 13:13-3.4(f)(2) makes it unlawful to “[r]efuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services, or reasonable structural modifications, 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.”

That single sentence is what your request stands on. The chapter holding it was readopted effective 13 October 2025 and now runs to 13 October 2032; subchapter 3, where this rule lives, was left unchanged.

Naming the regulation rather than the statute is not pedantry. A landlord who looks up 10:5-12 and finds nothing about animals may conclude there is no duty at all.

What the state’s highest court settled in March 2024

New Jersey is unusual: its Supreme Court has ruled on exactly this question. Players Place II Condominium Ass’n, Inc. v. K.P., 256 N.J. 472 (2024), was decided on 13 March 2024, unanimously, with Chief Justice Rabner writing.

The line to remember is one sentence: “Whether the animal has been trained is not a relevant consideration.”

The Court then set out how these requests get judged. A resident “must show that they have a disability under the LAD and demonstrate that the requested accommodation may be necessary to afford them an ‘equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.’” After that, “[h]ousing providers then have the burden to prove the requested accommodation is unreasonable,” and “both sides should engage in a good-faith, interactive dialogue.” Unreasonable has a definition: whether allowing the animal would “fundamentally alter” the provider’s operations or impose an “undue financial or administrative burden.”

Be clear about the limit. DCR’s own guidance says that “unlike service or guide animals, ESAs are not automatically exempt from a housing provider’s no-pet policies.” This is a balancing test with the weight on the landlord’s side of the scale, not an automatic pass.

The Court also gave advice worth taking literally: residents “who act on their own run the risk of losing the animal if they cannot make the required showing later,” and “[w]hen possible, it is preferable to engage in a collaborative conversation in advance.” Ask before the animal moves in, if you can.

Money, and a trap shaped like a Paterson two-family

DCR’s fact sheet on emotional support animals is direct about charges: “Your 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. However, your housing provider may require you to pay for any actual damage the animal causes.”

Where that protection comes from matters, because there is a decoy. N.J.S.A. 10:5-29.2 is headed “Housing accommodations.” It says a person with a disability “shall not be required to pay extra compensation,” and it voids no-pets clauses in leases. It reads like the answer. It is not. It reaches only “a service or guide dog,” each defined by training, so an emotional support animal falls outside it. For an ESA the no-fee result rests on the DCR guidance that the Supreme Court adopted, and that is how to cite it.

Your ordinary security deposit is capped by statute. N.J.S.A. 46:8-21.2: “An owner or lessee may not require more than a sum equal to 1 1/2 times 1 month’s rental.” Additional security collected later in the tenancy cannot exceed 10 percent of the current deposit in any year.

Now the Paterson-specific part. Under N.J.S.A. 46:8-26, the Security Deposit Act does not reach an owner-occupied building of two or fewer units unless the tenant gives the owner 30 days’ written notice invoking it. An owner living downstairs from a single rented flat is one of the most common arrangements in this city. If that is your building, the cap and the return rules are not automatic, the notice turns them on.

Paterson has no civil rights office. That is the answer, not a gap.

The city publishes its complete roster of boards and commissions, and it runs to sixteen bodies: a Rent Leveling Board, a Council on the Disabled, a Planning Board, a Historic Preservation Commission, and so on. None of them is a civil rights or human relations commission. Passaic County lists none either across both of its alphabetical commission pages.

New Jersey law explains why that is unremarkable. N.J.S.A. 10:5-10 lets mayors appoint local commissions on civil rights and then enumerates what they may do: foster “good will, cooperation and conciliation,” make recommendations to the governing body, run education programs. Investigating a complaint is not on the list. The Division on Civil Rights holds that power instead.

So the route is short. File with DCR online at bias.njcivilrights.gov, or call 1-833-NJDCR4U (833-653-2748). The nearest regional office is in Newark, at 31 Clinton Street, 973-648-2700. Northeast New Jersey Legal Services covers Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties and lists landlord-tenant work among its housing services.

Two clocks, and the shorter one is the state’s

N.J.S.A. 10:5-18 is blunt: “Any complaint filed in the division or in any municipal office pursuant to this act must be so filed within 180 days after the alleged act of discrimination.” That is roughly six months, and New Jersey does not offer a longer housing-specific version of it.

HUD is a second door with a longer deadline. One year under 42 U.S.C. § 3610(a)(1)(A)(i), with intake specialists at 1-800-669-9777. New Jersey’s own statute wires the two together: N.J.S.A. 10:5-9.2 says the LAD is meant to let DCR “qualify as a ‘certified agency’ within the meaning of the Federal Fair Housing Amendments Act.” If the 180 days have run, the federal year may not have.

There is one more clock, and it is not yours. Under N.J.S.A. 10:5-16, once DCR finds probable cause, “in a housing discrimination complaint only, any party” may elect to move the case into Superior Court instead, and that election must be made “not later than 20 days after receipt of the finding of probable cause.” Any party includes your landlord. Winning the probable cause stage can therefore mean 20 days to decide how you want to be represented in court.

The paperwork question, answered by the agency

DCR’s fact sheet is the best sentence in the state on internet documentation: “Documentation obtained from the Internet that does not come from a treating healthcare professional generally will not be sufficiently reliable to support the need for an ESA.”

Set that beside the Supreme Court’s holding that training is irrelevant and you have both halves of the honest picture. Nobody has to train the animal. Nobody can buy the paperwork. What carries weight is a current letter from a health care professional who actually treats you.

The same fact sheet limits what a landlord may demand in return: your provider “cannot require that your request be in writing or that you submit documentation in a specific format.” Putting it in writing is still smart, because it dates the request, but a manager cannot refuse to hear you because you used the wrong form.