California Bill Would Require Landlords to Accept Pets | KQED

“There were very few places that were pet friendly, and those that were pet friendly wanted pet rent, plus a pet deposit, plus only one pet allowed,” she said. “At one point, I thought I was going to be living in my car with my pets.”

Goolsby went as far as creating resumes for her small dogs, listing their behavior classes and vaccinations in an effort to win over landlords. When she finally found one who’d accept her, she had to put down an additional $500 pet deposit and pay $120 a month in pet rent.

“The rent was already high,” she said, “and the pet rent definitely didn’t help.”

Goolsby now has four dogs, seven cats, a fish and a bird. But Haney said his legislation would likely limit the number of pets landlords must accept and allow landlords to require pet liability insurance. Details on how many pets would be covered under the bill are still being worked out.

“What we see too often is just these blanket prohibitions of pets with no good reason for it, with no required justification for it and no protection of pet owners, who represent the majority of California’s renters, to be able to access housing just like anyone else,” Haney said.

Jenny Berg, California director for the Humane Society of the United States, said added fees and outright bans contribute to an overcrowding crisis at animal shelters in California and nationwide.

“One of the reasons that people relinquish their pets is because they can’t find affordable housing or housing at all that can accommodate their pets,” she said.

Gulbransen was relieved to hear the law only applies to common household pets — she heard an anecdote about a tenant who tried to pass off a tiger as a large cat — but is otherwise dismayed by the possibility of more regulations.

She said property owners are reeling from the stack of new local and state laws approved in recent years.

“When you put them all into a package, it’s so rife with possibilities for errors on the part of the landlord,” Gulbransen said. “That makes people think twice about renting out that empty unit.”

Plus, she said the state already has laws in place to protect renters with disabilities or mental health issues who rely on emotional support or service animals.

But Julia Howard-Gibbon, supervising attorney at Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, sees room for improvement. Many renters with assistance animals aren’t aware of their right to request exceptions to policies prohibiting pets.

“Or sometimes they do know, but the landlord really pushes back on that,” she said, noting that property owners sometimes request unreasonable documentation or otherwise make the process unnecessarily onerous.

Oftentimes, Howard-Gibbon said landlords simply reject assistance animals outright. A 2021 investigation (PDF) by Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California found that 55% of properties with “no pets” policies they surveyed were unwilling to grant reasonable accommodations for people who need assistance animals.

Haney’s proposal could fix that, Howard-Gibbon said. “It would remove all of these barriers that they face in getting these reasonable accommodations, even though they currently have a right under the current law to access them.”