alt Hacker News>> I'd gladly pay the pet deposit and extra money per month for a pet
Maybe, but my single data point: I'm on the board for a condo corporation and even though we spend a lot of time dealing with pet policies and the damage pets (read: dogs) cause, we have a total of ZERO pets registered (and paying the monthly fee), and these are overwhelmingly owners not renters who might be excluded from having pets to begin with.
I appreciate the insight, I'm definitely conjecturing there and I'm sure there's a lot of variables.
I'm curious, is this a few bad owners ruining it for everyone or commonplace. My suspicion is the former, as those things typically follow power distributions.
But I think the complete lack of options forces people's hands. If you're a pet owner, what do you do? The option of paying a pet deposit and monthly fee is either simply not available or extremely limited. So I think it is a bit natural that the abuse of the ESA system happened. My options are get rid of my cat or get an ESA. It's an obvious choice. And with the ESA you cannot deny me rent nor charge extra. That's why I call it the nuclear option. I've always offered to pay a deposit but when told there's a no pet policy it turns into "oh, sorry, I 'forgot' to mention she's an ESA". Most people I know with ESAs never make the first offer.
Truth is that there was an arms race and the pet owners won. The question now is if it is more profitable to charge for pets or get no extra money for ESAs. Either way people will not give up their pets. I have a legitimate rec but I know you can get them for pretty cheap. So whats the move from here? I suspect the best move is for landlords to at least try to get money for the pets that are there anyways.
Note: the ESA issue is only a minor part of my comment. I don't personally care about this issue beyond keeping my cat. But the other uses I'm much more concerned about