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Author: Mark Ainely | Partner GC Realty & Development & Co-Host Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast
Ever since that HUD memo leaked over Memorial Day weekend, I have been getting the same question from owners and operators all over Chicago. Can we finally start charging pet rent on emotional support animals now?
I understand why people are asking. The headlines made it sound like the rules flipped overnight. So here is the straight answer for anyone renting in Illinois. No, you still cannot, and the reason has almost nothing to do with HUD.
After managing around 1,500 units across Chicagoland and leasing over 350 units a year for the last 10 years, I can tell you the place owners actually get burned is not the obvious stuff. It is the two or three gray areas nobody warns you about. Let me walk through where the line really sits.
Key Takeaways
An assistance animal is not a pet under the law, so your pet deposit, pet fee, and pet rent do not apply to it.
In Illinois this comes from a state statute, the Assistance Animal Integrity Act, not from HUD guidance.
That means the recent HUD memo did not change what you can charge in Chicago or anywhere else in Illinois.
You can still charge for actual damage the animal causes, and you can still verify that the documentation is real.
The Short Answer
Here is the rule in one sentence. An assistance animal is not a pet, so anything you charge because someone has a pet does not apply.
That means three charges come off the table the moment you have a verified assistance animal. No pet deposit. No pet fee. No pet rent. It does not matter that your lease reserves the right to charge those things. It does not matter that every other resident in the building pays them. A verified assistance animal is exempt, full stop.
This covers more than just service dogs. Under Illinois law, an assistance animal includes both service animals and emotional support animals. So when a resident hands you a legitimate ESA letter, that animal is now in the same exempt category as a guide dog as far as your fees are concerned.
There is one more trap worth naming. You also cannot make the resident carry special liability insurance for the animal as a condition of approving it. The state treats that the same way it treats a pet fee. It is a cost you are trying to push onto the resident because of the animal, and it is not allowed.
Why the HUD Memo Did Not Change This in Illinois
This is the part most people are getting wrong right now, so stay with me.
The leaked HUD document was internal federal guidance. It dealt with how HUD's own enforcement staff would handle certain cases, specifically around untrained assistance animals. It was never a law, and it did not amend a law. Guidance and law are two different things.
Your obligation not to charge pet fees on an assistance animal in Illinois does not come from HUD guidance. It comes from the Illinois Assistance Animal Integrity Act, which the state signed in 2019 and has been in effect since January 2020. That is a statute. It lives in Springfield, not Washington, and the HUD memo did not touch it.
So even if the federal picture shifts again, and it will, your Illinois obligation is sitting right where it has been for years. When somebody tells you the memo opened the door to charging for ESAs, they read the headline and not the law.
What You Can Still Do
None of this means you are defenseless or that the resident gets a free pass on everything. Here is what you keep.
You can still charge for actual damage the animal causes. The exemption applies to pet specific fees, not to damage. If the animal chews the trim, scratches up a door, or soaks the carpet pad, that is a real cost and you handle it against the regular security deposit, the same way you would for any resident. The accommodation removes the pet charges. It does not remove the resident's responsibility for what the animal breaks.
You can still verify the documentation. Illinois does not require you to take a letter at face value. You are allowed to confirm the letter is authentic and that it comes from a real provider with an actual relationship to the resident. What you cannot do is demand a specific diagnosis or dig into their medical history. You are confirming the disability and the disability related need exist, not running an investigation.
You can still deny or remove the animal in narrow cases. The statute lets you act when the specific animal poses a direct threat to others that cannot be reduced, causes substantial property damage that cannot be reduced, or shows a pattern of uncontrolled behavior the handler will not correct. That analysis is about that specific animal and its behavior, documented, not about its breed or its size.
A quick word on Chicago specifically. Pet fees on actual pets are still perfectly fine here, and the security deposit caps under the Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance still apply to your deposits. None of that reaches an assistance animal. The local rules govern how you handle pets and deposits. They do not create an exception that lets you charge an assistance animal.
Where It Gets Genuinely Unclear
The clean cases are easy. Verified ESA, no fees, move on. The cases that actually land owners in trouble are the messy ones. Here are two I see all the time.
Scenario One: The Pet That Becomes an ESA Halfway Through the Lease
A resident moves in with a dog. They sign your pet addendum, pay the pet deposit, and pay pet rent every month like everyone else. Six months later they hand you an ESA letter and ask for an accommodation.
Now what? Your gut says they already agreed to the fee, so the fee stands. That is the wrong instinct.
Here is why it is unclear and how to think about it. When that animal moved in, it was a pet, and the charges were proper. The moment you verify the letter, the animal is no longer a pet in the eyes of the law, and the pet specific charges stop applying from that point forward. You stop collecting pet rent going forward, and the deposit can no longer be held as a pet deposit. The genuinely murky parts are the timing and the legitimacy of the letter. A letter that shows up right after you raised a concern about the animal deserves a careful verification, not an automatic yes and not an automatic no. This is exactly why you verify before you act and why you document the sequence of events. If the letter is real, the pet charges go away. If it does not hold up, the animal is still a pet and nothing changes.
Scenario Two: Two Animals, One ESA and One Pet
A resident has a verified ESA. They also have a second dog. The second one has no letter and no claim attached to it. It is just a pet.
People assume one accommodation covers the whole household. It does not. The ESA is exempt from pet charges. The second animal is a regular pet, and your normal pet policy, pet fee, and pet rent apply to it like any other pet in the building.
Where it gets foggy is when the resident tries to slide the second animal under the same letter, or comes back with a vague note that says the patient benefits from animals without tying the need to that specific second animal. That does not make the second animal exempt. You are entitled to documentation showing that the second animal is distinctly needed for the disability. Until you get that, the second animal is a pet, and it is treated like one. The mistake owners make is either charging for both, which is a violation if the first one is verified, or exempting both because they did not want the argument.
When you hit a case that does not fit cleanly into these patterns, especially anything involving a smaller owner occupied building where the coverage question gets technical, that is the moment to call a fair housing attorney before you charge anything. The cost of a phone call is nothing next to the cost of a fair housing complaint.
FAQ
Can I just charge a higher security deposit instead of a pet fee? No. You cannot raise the deposit because of the assistance animal either. That is the same prohibited charge wearing a different hat. Your deposit is your deposit, set the same as it would be for a resident with no animal.
Can I charge for carpet damage the animal caused? Yes. Actual documented damage beyond normal wear and tear comes out of the regular security deposit, same as any resident. That is damage liability, not a pet fee, and it is allowed.
Does the HUD memo let me start charging now? No. The memo was internal federal guidance, not law, and your Illinois obligation comes from a state statute the memo did not change. Charging on the strength of that memo is how you end up in a complaint.
Can I require renter's insurance that covers the animal? Not as a condition of approving the accommodation. Requiring special liability coverage specifically because of the assistance animal is treated like a prohibited pet fee.
Do I have to take the letter at face value? No. You can verify that the documentation is authentic and comes from a real provider relationship. You cannot demand a specific diagnosis or details about the resident's condition.
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Don't Go At This Alone!
This is exactly the kind of thing that looks simple until it is not, and one wrong move on a fee can turn into a fair housing headache that costs you far more than the fee ever would. At GC Realty & Development, our team handles assistance animal requests, documentation, and fee compliance across roughly 1,500 units in Chicago and the suburbs every single day. We keep owners on the right side of the line so you can keep your focus on the parts of this business that actually build wealth.
My mission has always been simple. Help owners protect what they have built, lower their risk, and buy back the time they are losing to the parts of this job that drain them. Getting the small things right, like who you can and cannot charge, is how you avoid the big things going wrong.
