10 August 2026, 02:47 PM
I rent an apartment, and my dog is my ESA. I am treated for a mental health condition, and having him around makes a real difference on the harder days.
I want to lay out where I am, because I have read a lot of threads on this and most of them stop at "know your rights." I know the rights part. What I cannot find is what people actually did when the landlord just goes quiet.
Before I got the letter, I spent a while looking at the online options, and there are a lot of them. A few did not mention an actual provider anywhere on the site, which felt like a bad sign. I read reviews across a few different platforms, compared a handful of sites, and ended up going with RealESALetter.com, mainly because a licensed professional actually evaluated me instead of emailing me an instant form.
That mattered to me because everything I read said the letter only holds up if there is a real provider behind it. Landlords push back on the instant ones, and I did not want to hand my office an easy reason to say no.
So I submitted it in writing. I called it a reasonable accommodation request, not a pet request, because a few posts I read said that wording matters.
And now nothing.
They have not denied it. They have not approved it either. Every time I follow up, I get some version of "we are still reviewing it, please wait." No timeline. No specific person handling it. No request for more documentation, which I would happily provide if they asked for it.
Meanwhile, they're still charging me $35 a month in pet rent, and they collected a $300 pet fee up front. From everything I've read, neither of those is allowed for an ESA once the accommodation is granted.
So my questions for anyone who's been through this:
How long did your landlord take to respond? At what point does "still reviewing" stop being reasonable?
Did you get the pet fee and pet rent refunded once it was approved, or did you have to fight for it?
Did anyone file a HUD complaint over the delay, and did that speed things up or just make the relationship worse?
I'm not trying to be difficult with them. I just don't want to sit here paying pet fees for six months on a request they never actually answer.
I want to lay out where I am, because I have read a lot of threads on this and most of them stop at "know your rights." I know the rights part. What I cannot find is what people actually did when the landlord just goes quiet.
Before I got the letter, I spent a while looking at the online options, and there are a lot of them. A few did not mention an actual provider anywhere on the site, which felt like a bad sign. I read reviews across a few different platforms, compared a handful of sites, and ended up going with RealESALetter.com, mainly because a licensed professional actually evaluated me instead of emailing me an instant form.
That mattered to me because everything I read said the letter only holds up if there is a real provider behind it. Landlords push back on the instant ones, and I did not want to hand my office an easy reason to say no.
So I submitted it in writing. I called it a reasonable accommodation request, not a pet request, because a few posts I read said that wording matters.
And now nothing.
They have not denied it. They have not approved it either. Every time I follow up, I get some version of "we are still reviewing it, please wait." No timeline. No specific person handling it. No request for more documentation, which I would happily provide if they asked for it.
Meanwhile, they're still charging me $35 a month in pet rent, and they collected a $300 pet fee up front. From everything I've read, neither of those is allowed for an ESA once the accommodation is granted.
So my questions for anyone who's been through this:
How long did your landlord take to respond? At what point does "still reviewing" stop being reasonable?
Did you get the pet fee and pet rent refunded once it was approved, or did you have to fight for it?
Did anyone file a HUD complaint over the delay, and did that speed things up or just make the relationship worse?
I'm not trying to be difficult with them. I just don't want to sit here paying pet fees for six months on a request they never actually answer.