1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

HUD's new memo stripping emotional support animals of their protected status under the Fair Housing Act is a direct attack on people with psychiatric disabilities, and I need you to push back on it. This policy reversal — issued on a Friday with no public comment period — will leave veterans with PTSD, and thousands of others with legitimate mental health conditions, without housing accommodations they depend on. Erik Heins, a former HUD fair housing enforcement attorney, has warned that this rule could cause HUD to dismiss or shelve thousands of valid disability accommodation appeals. The administration's own prior guidance recognized that emotional support animals provide real therapeutic benefits to people with disabilities. Framing every ESA owner as a bad actor to justify gutting these protections is both dishonest and cruel. Please use every tool available to you — oversight hearings, legislative action, direct pressure on HUD Secretary Scott Turner — to reverse this policy and restore ESA protections under the Fair Housing Act.