# ESA Letter in Grants Pass, OR: The Exemption That Isn't There

> Oregon's disability housing provision has no small-landlord carve-out in its text. In a town where most landlords own one house, that is the whole point.

- Source: https://supportanimal.com/blog/oregon-emotional-support-animal/grants-pass/
- Publisher: Support Animal (supportanimal.com)
- Updated: 2026-09-05
- License note: informational content; not legal or medical advice.

## Key facts

- Population: 39,468
- Households renting: 43%
- Typical pet deposit (as a pet): Barred as accommodation
- Typical pet rent (as a pet): $20-$40/mo for pets
- Breed/weight limits common: sometimes
- Pet fees, deposits, and breed limits with a valid ESA letter: none (FHA reasonable accommodation)

## The cheapest rents in urban Oregon, and the smallest landlords

Grants Pass rents 7,115 of its 16,552 occupied homes, 43.0 percent on the
2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate, six points above Oregon's
36.7 percent. Median gross rent is **$1,217**, the lowest of the state's twenty
largest cities and $308 below the statewide $1,525.

The 2024 Census estimate puts the city at 39,468, fourteenth in Oregon. It sits on
the Rogue River in Josephine County, forty minutes west of Medford, and its
housing market is shaped by a low median income and a rental stock made mostly of
older single-family houses and small conversions.

Which means the landlord is usually a person, not a company. Someone who
owns one rental, or two, or three. Frequently the house they lived in before
they moved, now let to cover a mortgage. They handle the viewings
themselves. They wrote the lease from a template, or bought one at a
stationer's, or did not write one at all.

And almost all of them believe that fair housing law is something that applies to
apartment companies in Portland.

## Where the belief comes from, and why it is wrong about Oregon

It is not a stupid belief. It has a real source: the federal Fair Housing Act
contains exemptions, some of which turn on the number of units and on whether the
owner lives on the property, and those exemptions are widely discussed and widely
half-remembered.

But Oregon has its own statute, and it is a different statute.

**ORS 659A.145 contains no small-landlord exemption in its text.** It applies to "a
person." It sets no threshold number of units. It has no owner-occupancy
provision anywhere in its eleven subsections.

The section takes its definitions from ORS 659A.421, and that section does have
exemptions — two of them. Subsection (6) is a sex-based carve-out, applying where
the property "is such that the application of this section would necessarily
result in common use of bath or bedroom facilities by unrelated persons of
opposite sex." Subsection (7) exempts familial-status distinctions "with respect
to housing for older persons," and then spends several paragraphs defining what
that means.

That is the complete list. Neither one touches disability. A person renting out
one house in Grants Pass is inside ORS 659A.145 in the same way a management
company in Beaverton is.

## Being careful about the federal half

One thing this page will not do is tell you that the federal exemptions do not
exist or do not matter. They exist, they have their own conditions, and whether
one applies to a particular property is a federal analysis that depends on facts
about that property.

What can be said cleanly is this: **the two questions are separate.** A landlord
who would fall within a federal exemption is not thereby outside Oregon's own
provision, because Oregon's provision has its own scope and its own, much
shorter, exemption list. "I'm too small for fair housing law" is a statement
about a federal statute being offered as an answer about a state one.

If a Grants Pass landlord raises it, the useful reply is not to argue about
federal law at all. It is to point at ORS 659A.145 and ask which subsection of the
Oregon statute they think excludes them.

## What the Oregon rules then require

Once that is settled, the rest is short.

**The animal.** ORS 659A.145(2)(g) makes it unlawful to refuse "to make reasonable
accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when the accommodations
may be necessary to afford the individual with a disability equal opportunity to
use and enjoy a dwelling." A no-pets rule in a handwritten lease is a rule.

**The deposit.** ORS 90.300(4): a landlord "may not charge a tenant a pet security
deposit for keeping a service animal or companion animal that a tenant with a
disability requires as a reasonable accommodation under fair housing laws." This
sits in Chapter 90, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and applies to an
individual owner exactly as it applies to a company.

**Training.** Not required, and this comes up constantly with landlords who have
read about service dogs. Oregon's "individually trained" definition is in ORS
659A.143(1)(a), which opens with "As used in this section" and governs shops,
restaurants and government offices. Housing is ORS 659A.145, which defines no
animal at all.

**What survives.** An ordinary security deposit that is not larger because of the
animal, and full liability for damage the animal actually does. Neither of those
is in dispute, and saying so early tends to lower the temperature of the whole
conversation.

## How to actually have this conversation

In a town like Grants Pass the tone matters more than the citation, because most
refusals here are not hostility. They are a person who genuinely did not know,
often one who is stretched financially themselves and is frightened of a
thousand-dollar carpet.

So write it down, briefly and without threat. A short message that says a
clinician has determined the animal is necessary, that ORS 659A.145(2)(g) requires
an accommodation to the pet rule, that ORS 90.300(4) means there is no pet
deposit, and that you remain fully responsible for any damage. That gives a
reasonable person everything they need to say yes.

It also does something else, quietly. It creates the record. ORS 659A.820(2)
requires a verified written complaint to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor
and Industries, signed by you, "stat[ing] the name and address of the person
alleged to have committed the unlawful practice" and setting out the acts, filed
"no later than one year after the alleged unlawful practice." The same message
that persuades a reasonable landlord is the evidence against an unreasonable one,
and you do not have to decide in advance which you are dealing with.

## And what has to be true underneath

All of it turns on one thing a message cannot supply. Oregon's housing provision
protects an individual with a disability; its deposit bar protects an animal
that tenant requires. The state has enumerated no clinicians, created no
registry and approved no form, which leaves the substance exposed and load-
bearing.

If you have a therapist, counsellor or prescriber, ask them first. They know your
history, the assessment is largely already done, and it costs nothing beyond the
appointment. Josephine County's constraint is genuinely severe: it has among the
thinnest outpatient mental health capacity of anywhere in western Oregon, waits
run long, and some practices will not write housing documentation regardless.

Failing that, a licensed evaluation is the same enquiry made on purpose: a
clinician licensed in Oregon working out whether a disability is present and
whether this animal accommodates it, and putting the answer in writing or
declining to. The possibility of a no is what makes a yes worth anything.

Against a landlord who owns one house and has never been asked before, that
difference is everything. A determination is a fact from a clinician, which
a reasonable person accepts and an agency can act on. A certificate ordered
online is exactly what a nervous small landlord suspects it is, and the
suspicion is what turns a conversation that should have taken five minutes
into a year-long one.

## What Grants Pass landlords can and cannot do

**Cannot:**
- May not refuse to make a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices or services where it is necessary to give a disabled tenant equal opportunity to use and enjoy the dwelling: ORS 659A.145(2)(g). A no-pets policy is a rule, and the accommodation is an exception to it.
- May not charge a pet security deposit for a service animal or companion animal the tenant requires as a reasonable accommodation, ORS 90.300(4), which names the companion animal in the statute itself.
- May not charge any fee at the beginning of the tenancy for an anticipated expense, and may charge only the fees ORS 90.302 lists, each described in a written rental agreement.
- May not make a distinction or restriction against a renter in the price, terms, conditions or privileges of the tenancy because of disability: ORS 659A.145(2)(c).

**Can:**
- May still charge a noncompliance fee for failure to clean up a service or companion animal's waste from common areas, but only after a written warning notice, only for a second or later occurrence within a year, and capped at $50 under ORS 90.302(3).
- May still hold the tenant liable for damage the animal actually does, and may still take an ordinary security deposit, provided it is not larger because of the animal.
- Faces a disparate-impact claim under ORS 659A.425 where a facially neutral policy hits disabled tenants harder than tenants generally, weighed against the policy's business purpose and any less discriminatory alternative.

## How to get an ESA letter in Grants Pass

1. **Check that you qualify**, Answer a short screening about how your condition affects daily life in Grants Pass. No diagnosis paperwork needed up front. (About 5 minutes: free)
2. **Connect with a licensed professional**, You are matched with a provider licensed for Oregon 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 Oregon 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 Grants Pass. (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 Grants Pass

- [United Community Action Network](https://www.ucancap.org/) (community action agency)
- [City of Grants Pass](https://www.grantspassoregon.gov/) (city government)
- [Fair Housing Council of Oregon](https://www.fhco.org/) (fair housing nonprofit)
- [Oregon Law Center](https://oregonlawcenter.org/) (legal aid)

## Frequently asked questions

### My landlord owns one rental house. Are they covered by Oregon fair housing law?

Not as far as Oregon's statute is concerned. Nothing in ORS 659A.145 excuses a small or resident owner. The two exemptions in ORS 659A.421 cover a narrow sex-based situation involving unavoidably shared bath or bedroom facilities, and housing for older persons on familial status, and neither one mentions disability.

### What about the federal exemption for small landlords I have read about?

That is a different statute and a separate question. The federal Fair Housing Act has its own exemptions with their own conditions, and whether one applies to a particular property is a federal analysis. What matters here is that Oregon's state provision is its own law with its own scope: a landlord outside a federal exemption is not thereby outside ORS 659A.145, and Oregon's text simply does not contain the carve-out people expect to find.

### My landlord lives in the other half of the duplex. Does that change anything?

Nothing in the text of ORS 659A.145 turns on whether the owner lives on the property. Some states write an owner-occupancy exemption into their disability provision; Oregon's section does not have one, and the exemptions in ORS 659A.421(6) and (7) are about shared bath or bedroom facilities and about housing for older persons rather than about owner occupancy generally.

### Can a Grants Pass landlord charge a pet deposit for my assistance animal?

No. ORS 90.300(4) provides that a landlord "may not charge a tenant a pet security deposit for keeping a service animal or companion animal that a tenant with a disability requires as a reasonable accommodation under fair housing laws." That subsection is in Chapter 90, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and applies to an individual owner exactly as it applies to a company.

### Does my animal need training to qualify in Grants Pass?

No. The phrase "individually trained to do work or perform tasks" is ORS 659A.143(1)(a), self-limited to a section governing public accommodations and access to state services. Where you live is ORS 659A.145's territory, and that section mentions no animal and imposes no training standard.

### My landlord genuinely did not know any of this. What is the best approach?

Put it in writing, calmly and early. Most small-landlord refusals in a town like this are not hostility; they are an honest belief that the rules are for someone else. A short written request that cites ORS 659A.145(2)(g) and ORS 90.300(4) gives a reasonable person the information they need, and it simultaneously creates the record you would need under ORS 659A.820(2) if they turn out not to be reasonable.

### How long do I have to file if the request is refused?

One year. ORS 659A.820(2) sets out the form: written, verified, signed by the complainant, filed with the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries, giving the responsible person's name and address and the acts or omissions alleged. The clock starts at the unlawful practice.

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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=oregon-emotional-support-animal%2Fgrants-pass