What HUD Will Still Charge You For

Hi again. If you read landlord media at all this summer, you saw some version of the headline: HUD has backed off emotional support animals, and landlords can finally say no.

It's a real change. It is also much smaller than it reads.

Start with what did not happen in May. HUD's 2020 assistance-animal notice — the one that told housing providers how to handle these requests — has been gone since September 2025. The memo's body says "I am permanently rescinding" it — but its own footnote says both it and the 2013 notice "were rescinded on September 17, 2025," and that this memorandum "reconfirms those recissions." What landed on May 22 is the memorandum saying what HUD will do instead: effective immediately, on animal-related accommodation complaints, its fair-housing office "will find reasonable cause and recommend charges only for those cases involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance" — and on a pet-policy waiver, only where the animal "has been individually trained to perform work or perform tasks directly related to the complainant's disability." Read narrowly, that is a real change, and it is the change the headlines are describing.

Now the part the headlines skip, and HUD says it plainly in the same memo. What was withdrawn was guidance — the memo itself notes the guidance had been "framed as nonbinding best practices" and that imposing obligations through it had skipped the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. Withdrawing it is not a rulemaking and it did not touch the Fair Housing Act, whose reasonable-accommodation requirement is statutory and still there. HUD deciding which complaints its own staff will charge does not tell a federal judge what the Act means, and it does not stop a tenant from suing on their own. The memo also says in terms that it does not address complaints under Section 504 or the ADA. It does say HUD intends to write real regulations on this, through notice and comment, "with the aim of harmonizing our regulations, to the maximum extent possible, with those of the ADA." That is the step that would change the law, and it has not happened.

And Florida has its own statute on this. Section 760.27 is still on the books, and (1)(a) defines an emotional support animal as one that "does not require training to do work, perform tasks, provide assistance, or provide therapeutic emotional support…" That is the opposite of the threshold HUD just moved to. The same section spells out at (2)(b) and (c) what you may ask for when a disability or the need for the animal isn't apparent, at (3)(a) what you may not — no diagnosis, no severity, no medical records — and the grounds on which you may deny.

I'm not going to tell you how the tension between those two resolves, because it hasn't. Florida's section is drafted with one eye on federal law throughout — subsection (2) opens "To the extent required by federal law, rule, or regulation" — and reasonable lawyers are going to read that interaction differently until somebody litigates it. The landlord who finds out how it resolves is the one who denied a request, got sued, and paid to be the answer. On a soft-leasing autumn, with a vacancy costing you more than the accommodation would, that is an expensive place to volunteer for.

So the move this month is to change nothing. Keep handling these the way 760.27 lays out: ask only for what subsection (2) allows, never a diagnosis, its severity, or medical records, and deny only on the ground (2)(a) names. You can offer a routine intake method — (3)(b) says so — but you cannot require a specific form or a notarized statement, and you cannot deny someone just for not using yours. Keep your own handling in writing; that is for your file, not a demand you get to make of them. If you already tightened your policy in June off the back of a headline, this is the week to put it back, and to check that nothing went out to a tenant in the meantime that you'd rather retrieve. If you did turn someone down, know what you are holding: the memo says plainly that nothing in it affects a tenant's right to seek redress in court, and the Fair Housing Act gives them two years from the occurrence or termination of the practice to bring it. HUD declining to take the case does not stop that clock. If you're managing from out of state, that means checking what your manager did on your behalf too — a policy change nobody told you about is still your exposure, and this is exactly the kind of thing that gets quietly updated in a template.

One thing to fix while you're in the lease file, unrelated but overdue. If your month-to-month paperwork says fifteen days' notice to terminate, it's wrong, and it has been since 2023. Florida Statute 83.57 requires not less than thirty days, counted back from the end of a monthly period rather than from the day you happen to serve it. Plenty of lease templates and online forms still carry the old number, and short notice doesn't get you a short delay — it gets you a defective termination and another month of a tenant you'd decided to part with. Our month-to-month guide has the counting worked through if you want it beside you.

A number worth knowing before you set autumn rents: more than half the listings in both our metros are now carrying a concession. Zillow's July read put Tampa at 51.7% with asking rent of $2,013, down 0.5% on the year; Orlando at 55.2% and $1,959, up 0.6%. For scale, the national number is $1,962 and rising 2.3% — both our metros are growing slower than that. When over half of listed units are buying occupancy with free weeks, the advertised rent on a comp is not what the owner is collecting, and pricing against it will leave you sitting.

Two worth your time. We published what a landlord can and can't do when a tenant withholds rent for repairs, which turns on a part of Chapter 83 that is easy to get the wrong half of. And there's the noise-complaint piece. Most of it is about the difference between a violation you must give a tenant the chance to cure and one you don't. It is an easy one to get backwards, and owners regularly do.

Change nothing on the animals this month. Change the fifteen to a thirty.

— The True North Team