Fair Housing - Therapy Animals and Pet Deposits

[Adam Giles]

I have been searching around in previous discussions and have not found anything specific regarding my concern so I am posting this discussion on an admittedly common subject so people can hopefully share any experience. 

My concern is regarding therapy animals. Based on the recommendations of others, I plan on asking for a reasonable form to be filled out by a provider when tenant claiming a therapy animal applies for one of my properties that has either a no pet, or pet deposit requirement. I was recently presented with a specific scenario that I had not encountered before and I am wondering if anyone else has run across it. I will, of course, be running it past my lawyers as well. It goes a bit beyond the intial accommodation.

The issue is when a tenant has a legitimate not from a provider that says a therapy animal is "prescribed", but the tenants has multiple animals. There is a big difference between making a reasonable allowance for a specific therapy cat, and a therapy zoo. So I am wondering if I can charge my pet deposit for the additional animals. For instance, if the doctors note does not specify that the tenant needs 3 cats and 2 ferrets for their therapy, am I now ok to charge the deposit?