Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Valley City, ND

A Barnes County college town where 44.5 percent of homes are rented

Valley City, North Dakota, counts 1,327 renting households against 2,984 occupied homes, 44.5 percent on the 2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate, some seven points above the 37.1 percent statewide share. The 2024 Census estimate gives the city 6,580 people, twelfth largest in North Dakota, and the Barnes County offices sit on Fourth Street NW in town.

Median gross rent is $780. The fifth-lowest of the state’s twenty largest cities and $174 below the $954 North Dakota median. Valley City State University supplies part of that renting population, which is why the local market turns over on an academic rhythm as well as an ordinary one.

None of which is why this page exists. Valley City exists on this site because of a sentence a leasing office is unusually likely to send a tenant here, and because of the four words at the front of that sentence that almost nobody reads.

The definition, and its first four words

NDCC 25-13-01.1 is the only place in North Dakota law where an animal working for a person with a disability gets a definition at all:

“For purposes of this chapter ‘service animal’ means any dog trained to do work, perform tasks, or provide assistance for the benefit of an individual with a disability. The term includes a dog trained to provide assistance to an individual with a disability, pull a wheelchair, lend balance support, retrieve dropped objects, or provide assistance in a medical crisis.”

Two things about it are true at once, and pages that get this wrong usually only notice one.

The description does not fit an emotional support animal. The animal must be a dog and it must be trained to do something. An animal whose help is its presence answers neither half. There is no honest way to argue an ESA into that sentence, and it is not worth trying.

But the sentence never comes near a lease. It opens with a scope clause, “For purposes of this chapter”, and everything that follows is fenced inside chapter 25-13.

Where chapter 25-13 actually runs

The chapter’s operative right is NDCC 25-13-02, and it names its own territory:

“An individual with a disability is entitled to be accompanied by a service animal in places of public accommodations, common carriers, facilities of a health care provider, and all places to which the public is generally invited, without being required to pay an extra charge for the animal; provided, that the individual is liable for any damage done to the premises or facility by the animal.”

Shops. Buses. Clinics. Anywhere the public is invited in. A dwelling is not on that list, and an apartment is not a place the public is generally invited.

That cuts both ways, so take the loss with the win. The phrase “without being required to pay an extra charge” sits in that same sentence, and it is a public-places rule. It is not a rent rule and it does not remove a housing fee. A Valley City tenant reaching for 25-13-02 to fight a pet deposit is reaching for the wrong statute — the one that actually does that work is NDCC 47-16-07.1(2), which excludes “a service animal or companion animal required by a tenant with a disability as a reasonable accommodation under fair housing laws” from the pet security deposit by name.

The one point where the chapter touches a lease

Chapter 25-13 reaches into housing exactly once, and what it sends across is a penalty rather than a right. NDCC 25-13-02.2:

“An individual is guilty of an infraction if the individual, in an attempt to gain admission to a public place under this chapter or obtain a reasonable housing accommodation under section 47-16-07.5, knowingly makes a false claim that a pet is a service animal.”

So the chapter that will not give a tenant a housing right will still reach a tenant who lies about one. Note the conduct, though, knowingly claiming that a pet is a service animal. A person who asks for an accommodation for an assistance animal, on documentation from a professional who examined them, is not doing the thing the section describes.

One more item from the same chapter is worth naming here because it circulates as if it were a housing credential. NDCC 25-13-02.1 lets a trainer bring a service animal in training into public places on conditions that include a “photo identification card issued by a nationally recognized service animal training program.” That card belongs to a trainer, for public accommodations, under a chapter that does not reach dwellings. It proves nothing about a tenancy in Valley City and no landlord may treat it as the missing piece of a housing file.

What governs the apartment instead

Two provisions, neither of them in chapter 25-13.

NDCC 14-02.5-06(3)(b) carries the duty:

“A refusal to make a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices, or services if the accommodation may be necessary to afford the individual equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.”

No animal is named there. No training is required there. A no-pets clause in a Valley City lease is a rule, and the accommodation is an exception to the rule.

NDCC 47-16-07.5 then says what a landlord may ask for, and it uses a phrase chapter 25-13 never defines, “assistance animal” — five times without ever fixing its meaning. The same is true of “companion animal” in 47-16-07.1(2). North Dakota’s code uses three phrases for these animals and defines only the one that is locked inside chapter 25-13. Nothing in North Dakota law, therefore, defines an emotional support animal out of a rented home.

When the wrong definition arrives in writing

It usually arrives politely: a paragraph quoting the trained-dog definition, a conclusion that the animal does not qualify, and an invoice for a pet deposit attached.

The reply is short, and it is three citations long. The definition is scope-limited to chapter 25-13 by its own opening words. Chapter 25-13’s operative right runs to public places and not to dwellings. The rule that governs this lease is 14-02.5-06(3)(b), and the documentation it can be supported by is described in 47-16-07.5.

That reply only works if the last item exists.

The document the housing chapter does ask for

NDCC 47-16-07.5 asks for something narrower and more demanding than a definition. Documentation from “a physician or medical professional,” from someone who is not running an in-state operation whose only business is issuing certificates, confirming both the disability and the relationship between the disability and the need for this accommodation.

Begin with a clinician who already treats you. That is the cheapest and strongest version of the file. Name the friction honestly before relying on it, though. Barnes County has limited independent practice, most specialist capacity in this part of North Dakota sits in Fargo or Jamestown, and university counselling services are built for short-course support on a semester calendar rather than for writing disability determinations; a clinician who has met you twice may decline to make a finding, and declining is the correct thing for them to do if they have not formed one.

Where that route is unavailable, a licensed evaluation is the same assessment arranged deliberately, ending in a recorded professional judgment or in a refusal to give one. Both endings happen. A provider whose conclusion is settled in advance is selling the certificate, and the certificate is precisely what 47-16-07.5 was written to look past.

Chapter 25-13’s definition never arrives at your apartment. The document that does has to be made by somebody.