Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Hot Springs, SD

The smallest of the twenty, and it rents

Hot Springs has 710 renting households out of 1,885 occupied homes, 37.7 percent on the 2020–2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate. That is ninth of South Dakota’s twenty largest cities and six points above the 31.4 percent statewide figure, which is a high share for a place of 3,608 people on the 2024 Census estimate.

Median gross rent is $897, about five percent below the $946 state median.

The southern Black Hills has an older population, a long-standing veteran presence, and a higher proportion of tenants with an existing clinical relationship than most South Dakota towns of this size. Which produces a distinctive kind of failed request: a letter from a clinician who genuinely treats the tenant, refused by a landlord anyway.

Usually for a reason the statute states plainly.

The section asks for two things

SDCL 43-32-35, first sentence:

“The supporting documentation shall confirm the tenant’s disability and the relationship between the tenant’s disability and the need for the requested accommodation.”

Two confirmations, joined by “and.”

Most letters supply the first. A clinician writes that the patient has a condition, sometimes names it, signs it, and that is the letter. That is a confirmation of disability and it is often entirely true.

It is half of what the section asks for.

The half that goes missing

The second confirmation is about the relationship: why this disability creates a need for this accommodation.

That is a clinical judgment, and it is a different judgment from the diagnosis. It is the sentence that distinguishes an animal connected to an impairment from an animal the tenant is fond of, and it is the sentence a landlord’s adviser looks for first, because it is the one the statute makes a requirement.

A letter without it has not failed because anyone doubted the clinician. It has failed because the statute asked two questions and got one answer.

What the second half does not require

Three things worth being clear about, because a landlord may ask for them and the section does not.

A named diagnosis. SDCL 43-32-35 says the documentation shall “confirm the tenant’s disability.” That is a confirmation, not a demand for a diagnostic label. Nothing in the section requires the condition to be named, and nothing prohibits naming it either.

Medical records. Not mentioned anywhere in chapter 43-32.

A particular form, or a conversation with your clinician. Neither appears in the chapter. SDCL 43-32-34 authorises a landlord to require “reliable supporting documentation”; 43-32-35 says what that documentation must contain. Where a landlord asks for more, the two sections are the answer.

And the source requirement, which is about the practice

The second sentence of 43-32-35:

“The documentation shall originate from a licensed health care provider who does not operate in this state solely to provide certification for service or assistance animals.”

For a Hot Springs tenant with a treating clinician, this requirement is usually satisfied without anyone thinking about it, which is exactly the point. The clause disqualifies a business model, not a licence type and not a location.

If you are unsure whether a particular provider satisfies it, the question to ask is whether they do anything in South Dakota other than issue certificates for animals.

This page will not tell you whether any specific institution or programme counts as a licensed health care provider for the purposes of the section. That turns on facts about licensure that a general page cannot verify, and it is worth putting to the clinician directly rather than assuming either way.

Fixing it is usually faster than fighting it

A letter missing the second confirmation is a fixable document. A clinician who already wrote the first half can, if their clinical judgment supports it, add the sentence that connects the disability to the need for the accommodation.

That is very often a shorter path than a charge, and the two are not alternatives: the 180-day window under SDCL 20-13-31 keeps running while an amended letter is obtained, so asking for the amendment does not cost you the option of filing.

Where it is not fixable (where the clinician does not consider that the relationship exists), that is a real answer, and it is worth more than a document that says otherwise.

The rest of the position

The entitlement itself sits in the federal Fair Housing Act at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B), with SDCL 20-13-23.7 alongside it: good faith efforts must be made to accommodate a disabled person reasonably in housing, undue hardship aside.

Money attached to the animal is dealt with by SDCL 20-13-20(2), which forbids treating a disabled tenant differently in a tenancy’s terms, conditions or privileges. SDCL 43-32-6.1 caps everything the landlord holds at one month’s rent “however denominated.” SDCL 43-32-24 requires the deposit back or written reasons within twenty-one days of the tenancy ending and the landlord receiving your address.

And a landlord need not ask at all where the disability or the disability-related need is “readily apparent or already known” to them: SDCL 43-32-34’s own exception, which in a town of 3,600 is not a theoretical one.

Two sentences a clinician can work with

Clinicians who rarely write these often ask what is wanted, and a vague answer produces a vague letter.

What South Dakota asks for can be put in two lines: a confirmation that the patient has a disability, and a statement of the relationship between that disability and the need for the animal in the patient’s home.

Taking those two lines to the appointment is not telling a clinician what to conclude. It is telling them what question the statute asks, which is information they have no reason to have and every reason to want.

And ask for it in the appointment you already have. These two lines rarely need a separate visit. A clinician who has been treating you can usually add them to a letter within the consultation you were attending anyway, which is the cheapest version of this whole page.

Getting a letter that answers both halves

Start with the clinician you already see. In Hot Springs that is a more realistic sentence than in most of South Dakota, and it is still constrained: Fall River County has very little independent psychiatric capacity, the region’s specialist care is largely in Rapid City an hour north with waits of months, and some practices decline to write housing documentation as a matter of standing policy regardless of how long they have treated you.

When you ask, ask for both things. Not “a letter for my landlord”: a confirmation of the disability, and a statement of the relationship between it and the need for the animal in your home. Clinicians who write few of these often do not know a statute sets the contents, and telling them is not presumptuous; it is the difference between one appointment and three.

Where that route is closed, a licensed evaluation is the same examination arranged on purpose: someone licensed determines whether a disability exists and whether this animal answers it, then writes a determination covering both, or explains that they cannot.

South Dakota wrote down what a letter has to say. The only thing that produces a letter saying it is an assessment that actually asked both questions.