Feywild Dog Training

On the morning of 5/22/26 the New York Times published an article regarding an internal memo circulating the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/us/politics/hud-assistance-animals-disabled.html

The proposed changes in the memo impact housing for disabled individuals who rely on an assistance animal. Assistance animals have, up until this point, been defined as both task trained service animals and emotional support animals required due to a disability. Disabled individuals are protected to live in otherwise non pet friendly housing with their assistance animals without paying additional fees.

For years, service dog handlers and disability advocates have warned against services which claim to “certify,” “register” or create housing letters for assistance animals. There has undoubtedly been a long history of people without life altering disabilities using these services to avoid paying pet fees, access housing with their pets, etc. However, these services are also used by disabled indiviuduals who really need help and who may not know better how to access the help that they need.

Faking or exaggerating a disability for the purpose of receiving accommodation is never okay. However, the ESA crisis did not occur in a vacuum. Access to pet friendly housing poses a huge problem. Accessing pet friendly housing can be very difficult, with 72% of residents surveyed by the Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative saying that pet friendly housing is difficult to find. Even when it is possible to locate, expensive fees mean that keeping an animal (even in pet friendly housing) is out of reach for many Americans.

The lack of access to pet friendly housing led to 23.4% of those surveyed by the Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative to “declare their dog an ESA.” A staggering 22.7% made the difficult decision to rehome their dogs. The shelter crisis in the US is not a matter of pure irresponsibility the way that many would lead you to believe. It is a matter of access. People want to keep their dogs. Under these circumstances they simply can’t.

Who may this memo impact?

- Disabled individuals who rely on the presence of an assistance animal in order to have companionship, routine, and therapeutic comfort
- Nondisabled people who have been fraudulently utilizing housing accommodations in effort to be able to keep their pets in an inhospitable housing markets
- Shelters, which are already overwhelmed and in crisis due to issues of human welfare impacting people’s ability to retain their pets

Given the lack of accessible information about these memos, each of these groups will now have to wait to see how changes to assistance animal laws impact their housing.

State protections may be more robust in some areas, providing a glimmer of hope for disabled individuals and overcrowded shelters. However, at its core, pet friendly housing must be made more accessible in order to protect the lives of humans and their animals moving forward.