Can a landlord charge for a pet in Arkansas, and what does the law require for an assistance animal?

Not every landlord — an owner-occupied or unit-count exemption takes some landlords outside at least one of these rules.

The money rules reach only some Arkansas landlords, and the line is five units. The security-deposit subchapter does not apply to dwelling units owned by an individual who, together with a spouse, minor children and any entities they control that were formed to rent dwelling units, owns five or fewer dwelling units — so below that line a pet deposit is an unregulated lease term, with no ceiling and no return machinery. The exemption is lost for any unit managed, including rent collection, by a third person for a fee, which pulls professionally managed small portfolios back inside the cap. The lease and pet-policy answers are the same for everyone, because Arkansas has no lease-content rule about pets to exempt anyone from. The Fair Housing Act's accommodation duty, which is what reaches an emotional support animal, has its own and different exemption for an owner of no more than three single-family houses and for an owner-occupied building of no more than four families. Arkansas has no manufactured-home-park pet rule and no publicly financed housing pet rule, so no housing class carries its own row.

Yes — no pet figure exists, but a pet deposit is a security deposit however it is named and counts inside the general deposit cap.

Arkansas has no pet-deposit statute, and it does not need one: the cap reaches a security deposit however denominated, so a refundable pet deposit counts inside the two-month ceiling along with the ordinary deposit wherever the subchapter applies. Where it does not apply — an individual owning five or fewer dwelling units, none of them managed for a fee by a third person — a pet deposit is an unregulated lease term, and a large share of Arkansas rentals sit there. Where the cap does apply, the rest of the deposit machinery applies too: return within sixty days with a written itemization, and if the payment is returned undelivered and the tenant cannot be found after reasonable effort it becomes the landlord's after a hundred and eighty days. A tenant who is wrongly kept out of the money may recover it plus damages equal to twice the amount wrongfully withheld, together with costs and a reasonable attorney's fee, though a landlord who proves a procedural error or a good-faith dispute is liable only for costs and the sum withheld. Nothing extra may be charged for a trained service animal; an emotional support animal is a different question, answered below.

Refundability: A pet deposit held as security is refundable in the same way as any other deposit: within sixty days of the end of the tenancy the property or money held as security must be returned, less accrued unpaid rent and damages, all itemized in a written notice delivered to the tenant (section 18-16-305). Arkansas has no concept of a designated non-refundable fee, so there is no way to convert a deposit into something the tenant cannot get back.

The general deposit cap it sits against: Two months' periodic rent for everything held as security: a landlord may not demand or receive a security deposit, however denominated, in an amount or value in excess of two months' periodic rent (section 18-16-304). The section has not been amended since 1979. The deposits page carries the general cap, the sixty-day return and the itemization rules.

Where the rule switches off or on: The whole subchapter, and with it the two-month ceiling, switches off for an individual owner of five or fewer dwelling units, counting the units owned by a spouse, minor children and any entities they control formed to rent dwelling units (section 18-16-303, subsection (a)). It switches back on for any unit managed, including rent collection, by a third person for a fee (subsection (b)).

Yes — no statute caps, authorizes or forbids pet rent or a pet fee.

No Arkansas statute mentions pet rent or a pet fee, and no general rule reaches either. There is no cap, no reasonableness standard and no disclosure duty, and the landlord-tenant chapters carry no occurrence of the words pet, animal, dog or cat at all. The one boundary that does exist runs against local government rather than landlords: since 2025 no Arkansas city or county may enforce an ordinance controlling the amount charged for rent, rental application fees or rental deposits, so a local cap on a pet charge is not available either.

Monthly pet rent: Monthly pet rent is simply rent, which the subchapter defines as all payments to be made to the landlord under the rental agreement (section 18-16-301). It is not a deposit, so the two-month ceiling does not touch it, and no statute caps it or tests it for reasonableness.

A one-time pet fee: A one-time pet fee is unregulated. Arkansas never enacted a bar on non-refundable fees of the kind several other states have, so there is no rule for a pet fee to run into — and equally no mechanism for designating a deposit as non-refundable. Whether money taken at move-in is a deposit inside the ceiling or a fee outside it turns on whether the landlord holds it as security.

No — no statute requires a lease to state a pet policy, and no written-rules provision governs one.

Arkansas imposes no lease-content duty about pets: no required statement, no conditional disclosure, no statutory default when the lease is silent, no limit on the number of animals and no condition a landlord may not impose. The terms-and-conditions section of the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act of 2007 does not mention animals, and neither does any other section of the landlord-tenant chapters. Arkansas also never adopted the uniform act's rules-and-regulations section, the provision other states use to govern a rule the landlord adopts after the lease is signed, so a mid-tenancy change to a pet rule is a question of the lease and of contract law alone. The practical consequence is that in Arkansas the landlord's own pet agreement is the operative instrument, and an appellate decision from 2026 shows a jury holding a landlord to it.

Yes.

No Arkansas statute restricts, authorizes or preempts a landlord's breed, size or weight rule, and there is no carve-out saying an assistance animal may not be refused on breed. A landlord may prohibit a breed by lease, and the 2026 decision noted below arose from a pet agreement that did exactly that. The word breed appears nowhere in the landlord-tenant chapters and nowhere in the Arkansas Fair Housing Act, and in the state's rules it appears only in agriculture — livestock, seed certification and labeling. Arkansas also has no statute limiting what a city may do about breeds, so local animal-control ordinances are a separate question from the housing answer.

Yes — a state statute or rule sets what a landlord may request or what a certifier must meet for an assistance animal in housing. The operative rules are statutory. State law incorporates a federal statute or codified regulation by reference.

Arkansas has no statute giving a tenant a right to keep an assistance animal. What it has is a reasonable-accommodation clause in the Arkansas Fair Housing Act of 2001: discrimination includes a refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when the accommodations may be necessary to afford a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling, including public and common use areas (section 16-123-314), subject to a proviso that nothing requires a dwelling to be made available to a person whose tenancy would be a direct threat to the health or safety of others or would result in substantial physical damage to the property of others. The act says nothing about animals, so that clause plus the federal rules is the route. Beside it sits a 2023 subchapter that regulates the paperwork and the market rather than the tenancy, and a 2025 section that reads at first like permission to refuse: unless prohibited by the federal Fair Housing Act as it existed on January 1, 2025, or other existing federal law, a private property owner may ban an emotional support animal from his or her private property (section 20-14-1005). The opening words do the work — for any rental the federal act covers, the exception swallows the rule — and the subchapter separately says it does not restrict or change existing federal or state law about a person's rights to reasonable accommodation and equal access to housing. The older section 20-14-304 gives a person with a disability the right to be accompanied by a trained service animal in housing accommodations without an extra fee or charge. Arkansas sets no interactive-process rule, no presumption, and no deadline for a landlord's answer.

Who it binds: The emotional-support-animal subchapter binds nobody as a landlord. Its duties run against healthcare providers, against people and businesses that sell an emotional support dog or the certificates, tags, vests, leashes and harnesses that go with one, and against anyone who fraudulently represents such an animal as a service animal; there is no unit threshold because there is no landlord duty to threshold. What reaches a landlord is the Fair Housing Act's accommodation duty, and that carries the act's own exemption: it does not apply to a single-family house sold or rented by an owner who does not own more than three at any one time, nor to rooms or units in a dwelling occupied or intended for no more than four families where the owner actually maintains and occupies one of them, with a further limit of one sale in any twenty-four month period where a non-resident owner sells. Religious organizations and private clubs are outside the act, and housing for older persons has its own rules. The service-animal fee bar in section 20-14-304 has no owner exemption of its own; it runs to the housing accommodations the older subchapter lists.

No state text lists the questions a landlord may ask; what the state regulates is the documentation and its source.

A licensed or qualified professional must certify. A treatment relationship is required. The law tests the certifier's conduct before issuing. The certifier's own rule requires a relationship with the person of at least thirty days before writing the documentation. Annual re-evaluation is required.

Who may certify: Any healthcare provider, meaning a person licensed, certified or otherwise authorized by the laws of Arkansas to administer health care in the ordinary course of the practice of his or her profession (section 20-14-1001). Arkansas sets no list of license types and no specialty requirement, but it sets conditions the provider must meet before writing anything: a valid, active license whose effective date, number, jurisdiction and type must appear in the document itself; a license to provide the professional services in the jurisdiction where the document is given; a client-provider relationship established at least thirty days beforehand; a clinical evaluation at least once each year; a verbal or written notice to the individual that misrepresenting an animal as a service animal may carry a civil penalty; and a review of the need before the document is renewed each year (section 20-14-1003). These are duties on the provider, not entitlements of the landlord.

The relationship test: The thirty-day client-provider relationship is the test, and it has one express waiver: it is not required for a person verified to be homeless (section 20-14-1003). Homeless status may be verified in any of three ways — identification through the local homeless management information system as the federal regulations define it, a continuum of care as those regulations define it or a homeless services provider contracting with one, or visual confirmation by a homeless services provider of a person dwelling in a homeless shelter, an encampment, an outdoor makeshift shelter or a vehicle.

The certifier's duties: Six of them, and they are the whole of the Arkansas documentation rule. A healthcare provider may not give documentation about a person's need for an emotional support dog unless the provider holds a valid, active license and puts its effective date, number, jurisdiction and type in the document; is licensed to provide the services within the scope of that license in the jurisdiction where the document is given; has established a client-provider relationship at least thirty days earlier, unless the person is verified to be homeless; completes a clinical evaluation of the person at least once each year about the need for the dog; gives the person verbal or written notice that misrepresenting an animal as a service animal may carry a civil penalty; and reviews the need before renewing the documentation each year (section 20-14-1003). A provider who breaks any of these may be disciplined by his or her own licensing board. A separate rule binds the market rather than the clinic: anyone who sells or provides a dog for use as an emotional support dog, or sells a certificate, identification, tag, vest, leash or harness for one, must give a written notice that the dog does not have the special training required to qualify as a service animal and is not entitled to a service animal's rights and privileges, and that misrepresentation may carry a civil penalty — in bold type of at least twelve points, on the receipt, on the product or on a separate piece of paper (section 20-14-1002).

Arkansas regulates the letter, not the landlord, and the difference matters. Nothing in Arkansas law says what a landlord may ask for, whether a landlord may require a form, whether medical records may be demanded, whether an online certificate counts, or how quickly a landlord must answer a request; those questions are governed by the federal rules. What Arkansas does is tell the healthcare provider what a document supporting an emotional support dog must contain and what the provider must have done first: an active license with its details set out in the document, a client-provider relationship of at least thirty days unless the person is verified to be homeless, a clinical evaluation at least once a year, a warning to the person about the misrepresentation penalty, and a yearly review before renewal. Breaking those rules exposes the provider to discipline by his or her licensing board, and to a civil penalty action brought by a public attorney. It gives the landlord nothing to enforce — there is no landlord remedy in the subchapter, and the subchapter says in terms that it does not restrict a person's rights to reasonable accommodation and equal access to housing. A landlord who reads the thirty-day rule as a right to reject a letter from a provider the tenant met last week is reading a duty on someone else.

Under state law, yes — the state bar reaches only a trained service, guide, hearing or assistance dog, or a certified animal; the federal rules still govern an emotional support animal; the bar is an express no-extra-charge clause, in a statute.

Arkansas bars an extra charge for a trained service animal in housing, and only for one. Every individual with a visual, hearing or other disability has the right to be accompanied by a service animal especially trained to do work or perform tasks in public ways, public places, other public accommodations and the housing accommodations the subchapter lists, and may not be required to pay any extra fee or charge for the animal (section 20-14-304). The housing reach, the fee bar and the damage rule all predate the 2017 amendment, which added the federal service-dog limb and removed the word "physical", so the right reaches every individual with a visual, hearing or other disability. The emotional-support-animal subchapter enacted in 2023 says nothing about money at all, and Arkansas's own definition of an emotional support animal — one that does not need to be trained or certified — is mutually exclusive with the especially-trained standard the fee bar hangs on. So under state law alone a landlord may charge a pet deposit or pet rent for an emotional support animal; what stops that in most tenancies is the federal rules and the state accommodation duty, not this section.

The definition it hangs on: The bar runs to 'a service animal especially trained to do work or to perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability', together with 'a service dog as defined in Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as it existed on January 1, 2017' (A.C.A. 20-14-304, subsection (a)) — a training limit on its face. Arkansas's own emotional support animal, by contrast, 'does not need to be trained or certified' (A.C.A. 20-14-1001, paragraph (1)), so it cannot meet that test.

The tenant is liable for damage the animal causes like any other tenant, by express words.

The handler is liable, and the statute says so for housing in terms: a person accompanied by a service animal in any public way, public place, public accommodation or housing accommodation is liable for any damage caused to the premises or facilities by the animal (section 20-14-304, subsection (b)). The words are wider than an ordinary damage clause — liability for any damage the animal causes, not damage beyond ordinary wear and tear — and they have been in the section since 1999. Arkansas says nothing about a tenant's liability for damage by an emotional support animal, so the lease and the deposit rules do that work. Killing or injuring a service animal without just cause is a Class D felony, and the offender must make restitution to the animal's owner (subsections (d) and (e)).

Landlord immunity: A narrow one, added in 2025: a private property owner or business owner is not liable for an injury to a customer or visitor by an emotional support animal except in a case of gross negligence (section 20-14-1005, subsection (b)). The words to notice are customer or visitor — the section does not name a tenant or a neighboring tenant, so it is much narrower than the general landlord immunities some states have enacted, and no Arkansas court has construed it.

An offense or sanction that reaches a misrepresentation made to obtain housing: a civil penalty and licensing discipline, reaching the person claiming the animal, the certifier who signs, and a vendor of false documents. Penalty terms: $500 for the first violation; $1,000 for the second violation; $2,500 for the third and any subsequent violation; and a civil penalty not to exceed $250 for each violation of the public-accommodation offense (§ 20-14-310). The text names no venue and no court has construed its reach, so it reaches housing by its general words.

Knowingly and fraudulently representing, selling or offering for sale an emotional support dog as being entitled to the rights and privileges the law gives a service animal carries a civil penalty of $500 for a first violation, $1,000 for a second and $2,500 for a third or later one (section 20-14-1004). The offense names no place, so it reaches a claim made to a landlord as well as one made anywhere else, and it is brought by the Attorney General or a prosecuting, county or city attorney rather than by the person lied to. The same penalties reach a seller who breaks the written-notice duty. A separate and older offense is limited to public accommodations: an individual may not misrepresent an animal as a service animal or a service animal in training to a person or entity that operates a public accommodation, and may face a civil penalty of up to $250 for each violation (section 20-14-310). On the other side of the paperwork, a healthcare provider who breaks the documentation rules may be disciplined by his or her licensing board, which puts Arkansas among the states whose law reaches the person who writes the letter. No warning is required before any of this, and none of it creates a remedy a landlord can use.

Where the words leave the reach open: Arkansas has two offenses and only one of them is limited by place. The 2023 offense has no place element at all, so on its face it reaches a tenant who presents an emotional support dog to a landlord as a service animal; the section's savings clause preserving housing rights is a savings clause, not a place limit. No Arkansas court has construed it, and the subchapter is untested in the state's appellate courts, so its reach into housing rests on the words alone.

Who enforces it: Only a public attorney may bring the penalty action: the Attorney General, or the prosecuting attorney, county attorney or city attorney for the place where the violation happened (section 20-14-1004). There is no private right of action, so a landlord cannot bring it and gets nothing from it. The provider limb runs through the provider's own licensing board instead.

In part — state law preempts the kinds of local rule named as barred, and any power named is one state law grants.

Since 2025 no Arkansas city or county may cap a pet charge. The two preemption sections, one for cities and one for counties, bar a local governmental unit from enacting, maintaining or enforcing an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount charged for rent, rental application fees or rental deposits in private residential or commercial leasing. A pet deposit is a rental deposit and a pet fee charged at application is a rental application fee, so an ordinance capping either is out of reach; before the 2025 amendment the preemption covered rent control only. The carve-out in the text, which preserves the statewide two-month deposit cap, is a floor rather than a grant of local power. What a local ordinance may still do is regulate pets as animals — licensing, vaccination, nuisance — and set rules for housing in which the local government itself has a property interest. There is no fair-housing devolution in Arkansas: enforcement of the state act sits with the Arkansas Fair Housing Commission, and no city or county has its own fair-housing or pet-charge ordinance here.

Local deposit or fee rules barred: As to leasing private residential or commercial property, and except as provided under the security-deposit cap, a local governmental unit may not enact, maintain or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount charged for rent, rental application fees or rental deposits. The bar binds landlords, property owners, property managers, tenants, prospective tenants and real estate companies alike, and it does not impair a local unit's right to manage property in which it has a property interest. Before a 2025 amendment this section preempted rent control only; the fee and deposit limbs are new. Text: A.C.A. § 14-54-1409 · (a)-(c) (municipalities).

Local deposit or fee rules barred, a second instrument: The county section is textually identical to the municipal one and was widened by the same 2025 act, so a county ordinance controlling the amount charged for rent, rental application fees or rental deposits is preempted on the same terms. Text: A.C.A. § 14-16-601 · (a)-(c) (counties).