# ESA Letter in Brandon, SD: Two Families, Not Four

> South Dakota's owner-occupied exemption stops at two families — the narrowest in this corpus. In Brandon, where landlords live on site, that number decides cases.

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

## Key facts

- Population: 10,837
- Households renting: 19.9%
- Typical pet deposit (as a pet): Barred as accommodation
- Typical pet rent (as a pet): $25-$40/mo for pets
- Breed/weight limits common: sometimes
- Pet fees, deposits, and breed limits with a valid ESA letter: none (FHA reasonable accommodation)

## Eight hundred rentals in a town of eleven thousand

Brandon has **809** renting households out of 4,072 occupied homes, 19.9
percent on the 2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate. That
is nineteenth of South Dakota's twenty largest cities by share, and less
than two-thirds of the 31.4 percent statewide figure.

Median gross rent is $976, thirty dollars above the state median despite how
few rentals there are. The 2024 Census estimate puts the city at 10,837,
thirteenth in the state.

Eleven miles east of Sioux Falls, Brandon is a commuter town, and its rental
stock looks like one: single houses let out, basement apartments, a duplex
here and there, and a landlord who is often in the building. Which makes one
clause of SDCL 20-13-20 the live question rather than a footnote.

## The clause

At the end of SDCL 20-13-20, after the four subdivisions:

> "The provisions of subdivisions (1), (2), and (4) **do not apply to rooms or units in
> dwellings that contain living quarters for no more than two families living
> independently of each other, if the owner maintains and occupies one of the living
> quarters as the owner's residence.**"

Two families. Owner in residence. Both conditions, and the ceiling is two.

That is the narrowest owner-occupied exemption in this corpus. Kansas exempts buildings
"occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than **four** families" where the owner
occupies one, under K.S.A. 44-1018(b)(2). Montana's MCA 49-2-305(2) covers the rental of
sleeping rooms in an owner-occupied single-family residence renting no more than three
rooms. South Dakota stops at two.

So the arithmetic in Brandon is unusually simple, and unusually often
against the landlord who invokes it:

- **Owner lives in half a duplex, rents the other half.** Two families. Exempt from (1),
  (2) and (4).
- **Owner lives in a fourplex and rents the other three units.** Four families. **Not
  exempt.** The building is twice the size the clause allows.
- **Owner lives in one house and rents out a second house down the street.** The clause is
  about "rooms or units in dwellings … if the owner maintains and occupies one of the
  living quarters." A separate rental house is not a unit in the dwelling the owner
  occupies.

A Brandon landlord saying "I live here, the law doesn't apply to me" is stating a rule
that exists. Whether it reaches their building is a question of counting.

## What the exemption switches off, and what it leaves on

It is written against **subdivisions (1), (2), and (4)**:

- (1) refusing to rent because of disability,
- (2) discriminating in the terms, conditions or privileges of the rental,
- (4) refusing to permit reasonable modifications at the disabled person's expense.

**Subdivision (3) is not in the list.** That is the advertising provision, indicating or
publicising in any manner that a rental by persons of a particular disability status is
"unwelcome, objectionable, not acceptable, or not solicited." An exempt owner-occupier
still may not advertise that way.

## And SDCL 20-13-23.7 does not carry the clause

The exemption sentence lives in SDCL 20-13-20 and is written against that
section's own subdivisions. The state accommodation duty is somewhere else:

> "For purposes of employment, public accommodation, public service, and education or
> housing, good faith efforts shall be made to reasonably accommodate the disabled person
> unless the accommodation would impose undue hardship.", SDCL 20-13-23.7

There is no owner-occupied carve-out on the face of that section. Whether a
court would read one across is a question no South Dakota case retrieved for
this page answers, so treat that as what the text says rather than as a
settled position, but do not assume the 20-13-20 exemption disposes of
20-13-23.7 either, because it does not say so.

## The federal question is separate and has to be asked separately

This is the part that most often gets skipped. An exemption in SDCL 20-13-20
is an exemption from **that South Dakota section**. The federal Fair Housing
Act runs its own exemptions, drawn differently, and **42 U.S.C. §
3604(f)(3)(B)**'s reasonable-accommodation duty is a federal obligation.

So when a Brandon owner-occupier claims the state exemption, the correct next question is
not "are you sure" but "and what about the federal Act." Those are two enquiries, and the
second one is where a great many small-landlord situations actually land.

## Documentation is a different chapter, with no exemption in it

SDCL 43-32-34 sits in the landlord-tenant chapter, not the human rights chapter, and carries
no owner-occupied clause at all. It permits **any** landlord to require reliable supporting
documentation where a tenant asserts a disability requiring an assistance animal, and bars
the request where the disability or the disability-related need is "readily apparent or
already known to the landlord."

In a town of eleven thousand where the landlord lives downstairs, that
second exception is not theoretical. Someone who has shared a building with
you for four years may well already know. It is worth saying, politely,
before producing paperwork.

## And what the documentation has to be

If it is required: SDCL 43-32-35 wants it to confirm the disability, confirm the
relationship between the disability and the need for the animal, and come from a licensed
health care provider "who does not operate in this state solely to provide certification for
service or assistance animals."

## The practical point about a market this small

With 809 rentals in the whole city, moving is not a realistic answer to a
refusal in Brandon. Sioux Falls is eleven miles away and has 34,786 rentals,
but it is a different town, a different commute and a different rent.

That asymmetry is worth naming because it changes what a good outcome looks
like. In Sioux Falls a bad landlord is a reason to look elsewhere. In
Brandon the accommodation you get in the unit you are in is very likely the
whole of the result.

## Counting the units, carefully

The exemption turns on how many families the **dwelling** holds, not on how
many the landlord rents to.

An owner living in one half of a duplex and renting the other rents to one
family and the dwelling holds two. Inside.

An owner living in one unit of a fourplex and renting only two of the other
three still occupies a dwelling with living quarters for four families.
Outside, and the empty unit does not help them.

Read the clause as a description of the building. That is how it is written,
and it is the reading that decides most Brandon cases.

## Which is why the assessment goes first

Start with a clinician you already see. They meet the source requirement
automatically and can speak from history rather than from a single
appointment. Most Brandon residents' clinical care is in Sioux Falls, which
helps with capacity and does not remove the wait: two to four months for a
new patient is ordinary, and some practices decline housing documentation as
policy.

Where that is closed, a licensed evaluation is the same examination arranged
on purpose, someone licensed deciding whether a disability exists and
whether this animal answers it, then setting the determination down or
explaining why they will not.

In a duplex where the exemption may genuinely apply to the state section,
the strength of the documentation and the reasonableness of the request are
doing more work than any citation. Bring the thing that works on a person,
not the thing that works in a filing.

## What Brandon landlords can and cannot do

**Cannot:**
- May not require documentation at all where the disability or the disability-related need is readily apparent or already known to them, SDCL 43-32-34, second sentence.
- May not discriminate because of disability in the terms, conditions or privileges of the rental, SDCL 20-13-20(2). A pet deposit or monthly pet charge on a required accommodation is caught here.
- May not take a security deposit above one month's rent "however denominated", SDCL 43-32-6.1, so a pet fee cannot be stacked on top of a full deposit by renaming it.

**Can:**
- May require reliable supporting documentation where a tenant asserts a disability requiring an assistance animal, SDCL 43-32-34. This is an express statutory right and arguing that a South Dakota landlord may not ask is simply wrong.
- May insist the documentation confirm both the disability and the relationship between the disability and the need for the animal, and that it come from a licensed health care provider who does not operate in South Dakota solely to certify animals, SDCL 43-32-35.
- Must make good faith efforts to reasonably accommodate a person with a disability in housing, unless the accommodation would impose undue hardship, SDCL 20-13-23.7, with punitive damages available under SDCL 20-13-35.1.
- Must return the deposit or give written reasons within twenty-one days of termination, and forfeits all right to withhold anything by failing to, SDCL 43-32-24.
- May evict and claim a damage fee of up to one thousand dollars where a tenant knowingly makes a false claim of disability or knowingly supplies fraudulent documentation, SDCL 43-32-36.
- Is not required by the chapter to modify the property, incur additional expenses or exercise a higher degree of care, SDCL 20-13-21.1. Waiving a no-pets rule asks for none of those things.

## How to get an ESA letter in Brandon

1. **Check that you qualify**, Answer a short screening about how your condition affects daily life in Brandon. 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 Dakota 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 Dakota 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 Brandon. (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 Brandon

- [City of Brandon](https://cityofbrandon.org/) (city government)
- [Inter-Lakes Community Action Partnership](https://www.interlakescap.com/) (community action agency)
- [SD Division of Human Rights](https://dlr.sd.gov/human_rights/default.aspx) (state civil rights agency)
- [Sioux Falls Housing](https://www.siouxfallshousing.org/) (local housing authority)

## Frequently asked questions

### My Brandon landlord lives in the building. Does South Dakota law still apply?

It depends on how many families the dwelling holds. SDCL 20-13-20 excludes from subdivisions (1), (2) and (4) "rooms or units in dwellings that contain living quarters for no more than two families living independently of each other, if the owner maintains and occupies one of the living quarters as the owner's residence." Two families is the ceiling. A duplex where the owner lives in one half is inside the exemption; a fourplex is not, whoever lives there.

### How does that compare with other states?

It is the narrowest owner-occupied exemption in this corpus. Kansas allows buildings for up to four families under K.S.A. 44-1018(b)(2); Montana's MCA 49-2-305(2) covers the rental of sleeping rooms where the owner rents no more than three. South Dakota stops at two families, which means far fewer Brandon landlords can rely on it than they may think.

### Which parts of the section does the exemption switch off?

Subdivisions (1), (2) and (4): refusal to rent because of disability, discrimination in the terms, conditions or privileges of the rental, and refusal to permit reasonable modifications at the disabled person's expense. Subdivision (3), on discriminatory advertising, is not in the exempted list, so an exempt owner still may not advertise in a way indicating that a person with a disability is unwelcome.

### If the state exemption applies, do I have nothing?

You still have federal law, and that is the point most often missed. The exemption in SDCL 20-13-20 is an exemption from the South Dakota section. The federal Fair Housing Act draws its own exemptions differently, and whether a particular Brandon owner falls within those is a separate question that has to be asked separately.

### Does SDCL 20-13-23.7 have the same exemption?

The exemption clause sits in SDCL 20-13-20 and is written as applying to that section's subdivisions. SDCL 20-13-23.7 (the good faith reasonable accommodation duty for housing), contains no such carve-out on its face. No South Dakota case reading the two together was retrieved for this page, so treat that as the text rather than as a settled answer.

### Can a small Brandon landlord still ask for documentation?

Yes. SDCL 43-32-34 is in the landlord-tenant chapter, not the human rights chapter, and carries no owner-occupied exemption. It permits any landlord to require reliable supporting documentation unless the disability or the disability-related need is readily apparent or already known to them. In a town this size, the second exception genuinely comes up.

### There are only 809 rentals in Brandon. Does that change my strategy?

It changes the practical stakes rather than the law. With a rental market that small and a nineteen-point gap below the state renter share, moving is not a realistic answer to a refusal here, and Sioux Falls is eleven miles away with a very different market. Getting the accommodation right where you are is worth more in Brandon than in most places.

---

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-dakota-emotional-support-animal%2Fbrandon