# ESA Letter in Florence, SC: What the Code Calls It

> Florence rents for $992, well under the state median — and South Carolina is one of the few states that defines an emotional support animal in its own code.

- Source: https://supportanimal.com/blog/south-carolina-emotional-support-animal/florence/
- Publisher: Support Animal (supportanimal.com)
- Updated: 2026-08-20
- License note: informational content; not legal or medical advice.

## Key facts

- Population: 40,923
- Households renting: 41.6%
- Typical pet deposit (as a pet): No statutory cap
- Typical pet rent (as a pet): Varies by building
- Breed/weight limits common: yes
- Pet fees, deposits, and breed limits with a valid ESA letter: none (FHA reasonable accommodation)

## Cheap rent, and a statute that does not get cheaper with it

The 2024 Census estimate puts Florence at 40,923 residents, eleventh among
South Carolina municipalities. Its housing stock counts 16,413 occupied units,
6,820 of them rented: a renter share of 41.6 percent in the 2020–2024
five-year American Community Survey, against a statewide 28.1 percent.

Median gross rent here is $992, against $1,180 statewide. Among the twenty
largest municipalities only Conway, at $866, and Anderson, at $975, come in
lower. Sumter is $1,076, Columbia $1,204, Myrtle Beach $1,261.

None of that changes the rule a Florence leasing office has to follow. The
chapter governing an accommodation request runs identically in a Pee Dee
duplex and a coastal tower, and South Carolina began by doing something
most legislatures never bother with: it wrote down what the words mean.

## A term the General Assembly bothered to define

Section 47-3-920(6) of the South Carolina Code says it in eleven words:
"'Emotional support animal' means an animal intended to provide companionship
and reassurance." 2019 Act No. 44 (S.281) put it there at § 4, in force
since 16 May 2019.

Read what the sentence does not require. No training. No certification. No
species. No minimum tenure, no breed, no weight, no vest. The only thing the
definition asks of the animal is a purpose, companionship and reassurance,
and it locates that purpose in what the animal is *intended* to provide.

Read, too, what the sentence is not. It sits in Title 47, the animals title;
it is a dictionary entry, not a grant of rights, and no renter should walk into
a lease renewal citing it as though it were one. What a definition buys is
narrower and still worth having: a leasing agent cannot substitute a private
meaning for the term. When a Florence landlord announces what an emotional
support animal "really" is, the state has already answered, on a page anyone
can pull up on a phone.

## The definition next door, and the two species inside it

The subsection above it defines the other term people confuse it with. Under
§ 47-3-920(4)(a), a service animal — or one still in training — is an
animal "trained or being trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual
with a disability," and then: "A service animal is not a pet and is limited to
a dog or a miniature horse."

Three things are packed into that clause. A training requirement: the animal
has to have been taught to do something. A status declaration: the statute
puts a service animal outside the category of pet by fiat. And a closed list
of two species, where nearly every misquotation in this area starts.

## The line at (4)(b)

South Carolina then drew the boundary explicitly rather than leaving it to be
inferred. Section 47-3-920(4)(b) provides that "[t]he crime-deterrent effect
of an animal's presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being,
comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of
this definition."

Set that beside § 47-3-920(6) and the drafting becomes obvious. The very
thing the code says an emotional support animal is *for* (companionship,
reassurance, comfort) is the thing it says cannot make an animal a service
animal. The two definitions were written into the same Act on the same day,
to sort animals into different boxes, not to rank them. An emotional support
animal is not a failed service animal. It is a different statutory category
with a different job description.

## Why "a dog or a miniature horse" does not follow you home

Here is the practical payoff, the sentence worth carrying into a Florence
leasing office. The species limit is a clause inside the definition of *one
term*, service animal, in *one chapter* of Title 47. It appears nowhere in
the housing law.

The housing duty lives in a different title. Section 31-21-70(G)(2)
makes it discrimination to refuse "reasonable accommodations in rules,
policies, practices, or services when such accommodations may be necessary to
afford the person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling." Section
31-21-70(N), which sets out what a landlord may ask and what documentation may
be requested, applies by its own terms to "an animal that is not a service
animal": the assistance-animal provision, by self-description. Neither
subsection names a dog. Neither names a horse. Section 31-21-70(N)(2) speaks
of "the animal in question," which is as species-neutral as drafting gets.

So a landlord in Florence who says state law only recognises dogs and
miniature horses is quoting a real sentence from the wrong statute. The
limitation is genuine; it limits who counts as a service animal, which mostly
matters at a door you are walking through with an animal, not at a lease you
are signing.

Two boundaries survive that, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. An
accommodation still has to be reasonable. § 31-21-70(G)(2) asks for
reasonable ones, and that adjective does real work where an animal has already
hurt somebody. The direct-threat limit itself is federal rather than state:
24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d) excuses a landlord from providing a dwelling where the
tenancy "would result in substantial physical damage to the property of
others" or threatens anyone's health or safety, measured against the
specific animal's own conduct, never against a category. And § 31-21-70(A)
lifts §§ 31-21-40 and 31-21-60 off any dwelling holding four families or
fewer, each living independently, where the owner keeps one of the living
quarters as his own residence, which in a city of older divided houses is not
a rare shape.

## What each category is actually good for

Sorted properly, the two definitions buy different things.

A service animal under § 47-3-920(4) is built for access. Title 47's
architecture is about getting through doors: § 47-3-920(7) defines places of
public accommodation as airports, train stations, bus stations and the
establishments described in § 45-9-10, and § 47-3-990 provides that such
places "may establish rules and regulations related to access to such
facilities by nonservice animals, including emotional support animals." A
Florence restaurant may lawfully say no to your cat. The fine in § 47-3-980
belongs to the same world, what it reaches is passing an animal off *as a
service animal*, which a housing request never claims.

An emotional support animal is built for the dwelling. What it gets you is one
thing: the rule adjusted, under § 31-21-70(G)(2). A no-pets clause is a rule.
Notice the asymmetry the code creates: the statute declares a service
animal "not a pet," and says no such thing about an ESA. What takes an
approved assistance animal off the pet fee schedule in housing is not a
label. It is the mechanics of an accommodation, which changes a policy rather
than granting permission under it. That matters more in Florence than the
$992 median rent suggests, because South Carolina caps neither security
deposits nor pet rent; § 27-40-410 governs how deposit money comes back, in an
itemised written notice within thirty days, not how much a landlord may take.

## Writing a letter to the definition

Because South Carolina defined the term, the target is unusually clear. Your
documentation has to describe a person with a disability and an animal doing
the work § 47-3-920(6) names, companionship and reassurance, for that
person's condition. Section 31-21-70(N)(2) then treats documentation
establishing a disability and disability-related assistance or emotional
support as sufficient. Nothing in either sentence describes a product. A
certificate answers neither half, because no one assessed you to print it.

That assessment takes a licensed professional, and three ways reach one. A
clinician you already see is the least expensive, ask, but
reckon with the wait for a slot and with explaining a document format that may
be new to them. A community mental health provider is the second; its front
door is designed around ongoing treatment, so expect the queue to be longer
still. The third is an evaluation booked for exactly this: a brief structured
screening, a South Carolina-licensed clinician, and a letter that issues only
if the assessment warrants one, drafted against the definitions above rather
than around them.

For the dispute rather than the document, the **City of Florence** publishes a
Quality Affordable Housing page and a Community Services department under its
residents section, and **Florence County** keeps its council, planning
commission and zoning appeals meeting schedule online. **United Way of
Florence County** funds local mental health, home rehabilitation and basic
needs programmes, including financial assistance toward rent, utilities and
emergency shelter, and routes callers to 211. **South Carolina 211** costs
nothing, keeps the call confidential and picks up every day of the year: dial
2-1-1, text 211-211 with your ZIP code, or ring 866-892-9211. None of them
writes the letter, but knowing which of the code's two definitions you are in
is what makes the letter worth writing.

## What Florence landlords can and cannot do

**Cannot:**
- Cannot refuse a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices or services where it may be necessary to give a person with a handicap an equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling: S.C. Code Ann. § 31-21-70(G)(2), and 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(a) federally.
- Cannot treat a no-pets policy as the end of the conversation. A no-pets policy is a rule, and rules are what § 31-21-70(G)(2) requires be adjusted where an accommodation may be necessary.
- Cannot dismiss documentation that establishes a disability and a disability-related need. Under § 31-21-70(N)(2) such documentation "shall be deemed sufficient", the statute settles the question rather than leaving it to the landlord's taste.
- Cannot demand that the animal be registered, certified, or wearing a vest. South Carolina's own 2019 Act recorded in its preamble that no vest, marking or documentation is required for an animal to qualify, and that such things are not "a reliable indication" of anything.
- Cannot charge pet rent, a pet deposit or a pet fee for an approved assistance animal, because the accommodation is a change to a rule rather than permission to keep a pet.
- Cannot threaten a tenant with § 47-3-980 for making a housing request. That section penalises misrepresenting an animal as a service animal, expressly "does not constitute a criminal offense," and does not describe an emotional-support accommodation request under Title 31.
- Cannot coerce, intimidate, threaten or interfere with a tenant for exercising a right under the Fair Housing Law. § 31-21-80, with the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act's own § 27-40-910 alongside it.

**Can:**
- May ask the two questions § 31-21-70(N)(1) sets out: whether the person seeking to live with the animal has a disability that substantially limits a major life activity, and whether they have a disability-related need for the animal.
- May request documentation verifying the answers to those two questions, § 31-21-70(N)(2). What it may not do is keep asking after documentation that meets the statutory standard has arrived.
- May decline where the specific animal would be a direct threat to the health or safety of others or would cause substantial physical damage to the property of others. 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d), assessed on that animal's actual conduct and history rather than its breed or weight. Note the authority: South Carolina's own threat clause at § 31-21-70(E) is written only against § 31-21-40(1) and (2), the two subdivisions that omit handicap, so it does not by its terms answer an assistance-animal request.
- May set the security deposit at any amount, because South Carolina caps none, but must itemise every deduction in writing within thirty days under § 27-40-410, on pain of treble damages.
- May fall outside §§ 31-21-40 and 31-21-60 entirely if the building holds no more than four families and the owner actually lives in one of them, § 31-21-70(A). The federal Fair Housing Act still applies on its own terms.

## How to get an ESA letter in Florence

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

- [City of Florence](https://www.cityofflorence.com/) (city agency)
- [Florence County](https://www.florenceco.org/) (county agency)
- [United Way of Florence County](https://www.uwflorence.org/) (community services)
- [South Carolina 211](https://www.sc211.org/) (community services)

## Frequently asked questions

### Does South Carolina law actually define an emotional support animal?

Yes, which puts it in a minority of states. Section 47-3-920(6) of the South Carolina Code reads: "'Emotional support animal' means an animal intended to provide companionship and reassurance." 2019 Act No. 44 (S.281) added it at § 4, in force from 16 May 2019. Two things follow for a Florence renter. The first is what the definition leaves out. It requires no training, no species, no certificate and no registration; the only thing it asks about the animal is the purpose it is intended to serve. The second is what it is: a definition in Title 47, the animals title, and not by itself a source of housing rights. Those come from Title 31, Chapter 21. But having the term fixed in the code means a leasing office cannot invent a private meaning for it, and that is a better position than a tenant in most states starts from.

### My Florence landlord says state law only allows dogs and miniature horses. Is that right?

That sentence is real and it is in the wrong statute. The two-species limit sits inside § 47-3-920(4)(a), which defines a service animal as one "trained or being trained to do work or perform tasks" and says such an animal "is not a pet and is limited to a dog or a miniature horse." It is a limit on who counts as a service animal. The housing provisions are in a different title and contain no species list: § 31-21-70(G)(2) obliges a covered landlord to adjust "rules, policies, practices, or services" where necessary, and § 31-21-70(N) applies expressly to "an animal that is not a service animal" while naming no animal at all. Subsection (N)(2) refers to "the animal in question." So a cat, a rabbit or a small dog can all be the subject of a Florence accommodation request; none of them can be a service animal in South Carolina's sense.

### If my animal comforts me, doesn't that make it a service animal?

Not under South Carolina's definitions, and the code says so in terms rather than leaving it to inference. Section 47-3-920(4)(b) provides that "[t]he crime-deterrent effect of an animal's presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition." Put that next to § 47-3-920(6), which says an emotional support animal is one "intended to provide companionship and reassurance," and the drafting is deliberate: the exact function that makes an animal an ESA is the function excluded from the service-animal test. Both subsections came from the same 2019 Act. The categories are different, not ranked: an emotional support animal is not a service animal that fell short of training, and in housing the distinction costs you nothing, because § 31-21-70(N) was written for the non-service-animal case.

### What does each category actually get me in Florence?

They point in different directions. A service animal is built for access: § 47-3-920(7) defines places of public accommodation as airports, train stations, bus stations and the establishments described in § 45-9-10, and § 47-3-990 lets those places "establish rules and regulations related to access to such facilities by nonservice animals, including emotional support animals." A Florence shop may lawfully turn an ESA away. An emotional support animal is built for the dwelling: what it gets you is a reasonable accommodation in rules under § 31-21-70(G)(2), which is what reaches a no-pets clause. Note one asymmetry the code creates. The statute declares a service animal "not a pet"; it makes no such declaration about an ESA. What takes an approved assistance animal off the pet fee schedule at home is not a label but the mechanics, an accommodation changes a policy rather than buying permission under it.

### Does Florence's low rent mean a smaller pet deposit?

Not as a matter of law, because South Carolina does not regulate either number. There is no statutory cap on a security deposit anywhere in the state, and the words "pet" and "animal" do not appear in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act at all, so nothing limits pet rent either. Florence's $992 median gross rent — $188 under the $1,180 state figure on the 2020–2024 American Community Survey — sets no ceiling on what a landlord may ask for up front. What § 27-40-410 does control is the money coming back: every deduction "must be itemized by the landlord in a written notice to the tenant together with the amount due, if any, within thirty days" after the tenancy ends and possession is delivered, and a landlord who fails is liable for "three times the amount wrongfully withheld and reasonable attorney's fees." Leave a forwarding address in writing.

### Can a Florence landlord refuse even after I meet the definition?

In two situations, and neither is about the species of the animal. The first is federal: 24 C.F.R. § 100.202(d) spares a landlord any obligation to house a tenancy that "would constitute a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals" or "would result in substantial physical damage to the property of others." That is a judgement about the specific animal and how it has behaved, not about a breed settled in advance or a weight printed on a lease addendum. Separately, § 31-21-70(A) lifts §§ 31-21-40 and 31-21-60 off a dwelling whose living quarters hold four families or fewer, each living independently, where the owner "actually maintains and occupies one of the living quarters as his residence". A shape that turns up in older houses divided into flats. Two cautions there: what steps back is the state chapter, since the federal Fair Housing Act draws its exemptions differently, and an exempt owner may still say yes. If § 31-21-70(E) is quoted at you, check its first line, which disapplies § 31-21-40(1) and (2), subdivisions that do not cover handicap at all.

### Where can I get help in Florence if the request goes wrong?

Start with the free statewide line. South Carolina 211 keeps the call confidential, costs nothing and picks up around the clock every day of the year, routing residents to health and social services: dial 2-1-1, text 211-211 with your ZIP code, or ring 866-892-9211. Locally, United Way of Florence County funds mental health, home rehabilitation and basic needs programmes in the county, including financial assistance toward rent, utilities and emergency shelter, and routes people to 211 through its own Get Help page. The City of Florence publishes a Quality Affordable Housing page and a Community Services department under the residents section of its site, and Florence County posts its council, planning commission and board of zoning appeals meeting schedule. None of these writes ESA letters, and none of them is a substitute for the licensed evaluation your documentation has to come from. They are for the dispute, not the document.

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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=south-carolina-emotional-support-animal%2Fflorence