Salt Lake City apartment resident Wanda Howard, who is disabled, wanted a cat.

Her doctor, who thought an emotional support animal would help Howard, wrote her a prescription for one and a letter to her landlord verifying Howard’s disability. When the landlord required a $300 deposit for the animal, Howard turned to the Disability Law Center, which informed the landlord such a demand is illegal under federal law.

The landlord retreated. Howard got her cat, Reese’s, at the Salt Lake County animal shelter. “When I’m sick, he’s a great comfort,” Howard said, describing how Reese’s puts his paw on her chest and stays still. “Even just to come home from being out all day to have him waiting, crying. I don’t know how I made it without him.”

Seeing Eye dogs, hearing dogs trained to help their owners by carrying notes or alerting them to answer the door or dogs that pull people in wheelchairs are commonplace. But animals that help those whose disabilities aren’t apparent often run into resistance, especially with landlords and housing associations.

Disability Law Center advocate Liz McCoy said 80 percent of the 500 housing complaints her organization has received during the past two years were about service and emotional-support animals.

“It’s one of the most commonly seen complaints in our office,” agreed Dan Singer, spokesman for the Utah Antidiscrimination and Labor Division.

While Howard’s hassle didn’t require a judge to sort things out, a recent dispute between a disabled veteran and a Park City condominium association appears headed for federal court.

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Equal-opportunity animals » This year, the Americans with Disabilities Act was amended to say only dogs or miniature horses can be considered service animals. But that applies only to animals that accompany disabled people in public, said Disability Law Center attorney Aaron Kinikini.

The Fair Housing Act does not mention animals, saying only that disabled people must be allowed “reasonable accommodation.” Any animal can be considered assistive in people’s homes — from dogs and cats to birds, rats, snakes, lizards and ferrets — if it provides therapeutic support and a medical professional has written a prescription for it.

Anyone living or hoping to live with an animal in housing with a no-pet policy should ask for accommodation before moving in, Kinikini said.

A landlord can ask for documentation of the applicant’s disability from a health-care provider, but the provider doesn’t have to disclose the diagnosis, Kinikini said. And while landlords can charge a tenant for any damage the animal causes, they can’t require a pet deposit, because under the law a service animal is not a pet.

“You can’t,” Kinikini said, “charge a deposit for that equal opportunity.”

Sometimes landlords resist because disabilities such as post-traumatic stress, bipolar, anxiety or depression disorders aren’t visible, and mental disabilities still carry a stigma, Kinikini said. Landlords may suspect people are trying to get out of paying pet deposits by claiming their animals are assistive, he said, or may have policies they believe are airtight.

“If you go to certain complexes and say upfront you have an emotional-support animal and ask for accommodation, you are handed a stack of forms, one of which is a full-on ... release to allow direct questioning of a doctor,” Kinikini said. “Our position is, that’s illegal.”

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