When a doctor says Fido must stay

Why one lawyer thinks tenant requests for emotional support dogs is getting out of hand

puppyLooking for relief from the stress of city life? There’s an organic app for that — and it’s called a pet. As more and more New York residents deploy the legal argument that they need a dog (or another animal) for “emotional support,” landlords and condo and co-op boards are increasingly powerless in banning pets from residential buildings, one real estate attorney told The Real Deal.

Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) provide comfort to sufferers from psychological disorders by their presence alone. Under the Fair Housing Amendment Act, landlords and property managers must permit them even if they do not allow pets so long as the tenant can provide proof from a doctor or other licensed professional. 

While the phenomenon of applying for ESAs is far from new, Sherwin Belkin, founding partner at Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman, says the practice has ramped up significantly. He said he used to advise his landlord clients on tenant ESA requests every couple of months, but now he handles up to two such cases a week. Most of the time, Belkin, who himself owns a golden retriever, said that his role is to minimize his clients’ liability and avoid discrimination claims. He estimates that buildings manage to turn down requests in about 10 percent of cases, while getting an emotional-support-pet owning tenant to move out, or getting rid of his or her animal, is successful less than 5 percent of the time.

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The repercussions for pet-denying landlords are serious and can get expensive, as city, state and federal human rights agencies can impose fines of tens of thousands of dollars. Nor can landlords object to a dog’s breed or size.

To be sure, properly trained animals have been credited with having a dramatic ameliorative effect on people struggling with psychiatric disabilities, especially children. What frustrates landlords and co-op boards is that the conditions — documented in letters from doctors — that justify a tenant’s need for an ESA are “difficult to rebut.”

Belkin used his own emotional state as an example. “I’m a Jewish New York attorney. I’m always sad and I always feel guilty,” he quipped.

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