DC's pet-fee caps and breed-ban repeal are law and not in force
DC's pet-fee caps and breed-ban repeal are law and not in force
2026-09-09 · District of Columbia · Legislation
The provisions of District law that cap pet deposits and bar breed, size and weight restrictions have not been implemented. Subsections (b-3) and (b-4) of D.C. Code § 42-3505.10 read, in the codified text, “Not Funded.”1
This one catches people out, because the parent Act is genuinely in force. The Pets in Housing Amendment Act of 2024 took effect March 21, 2025. What is not in force is the part everyone quotes.
What the Act contains, and what is inert
The Act adds a definition of “common household pet” at § 42-3501.03(6A) and amends the Rental Housing Act's fee provisions. Two of those amendments are conditional.
The DC Law Library's applicability note is unambiguous: “§ 4 of D.C. Law 25-308 provided that the amendment to this section by § 2(c)(2) of D.C. Law 25-308 is subject to the inclusion of the law's fiscal effect in an approved budget and financial plan. Therefore that amendment has not been implemented.”2
The unimplemented material is the substance: a cap on pet security deposits at 15 percent of monthly rent, a cap on pet rent at 1 percent of the first full month's rent per dog with a cumulative 1 percent for other pets, a bar on any deposit or pet rent for a service or assistance animal, and — for residential leases beginning after October 1, 2026 — a prohibition on restricting tenancy or charging differential fees or rent based on a pet's breed, size or weight.
Why the October 1, 2026 date is misleading on its own
That applicability date appears in the enacted text and has been widely repeated. It is the date on which the breed, size and weight provision would begin to reach new leases — if the funding condition were satisfied first. It is not an independent switch. A date inside an unimplemented subsection does not implement the subsection.
What this means for DC associations
Start with the boundary, because it is the thing most often blurred. These provisions are rental law. They amend the Rental Housing Act and bind a “housing provider” — in a condominium, a unit owner who leases their unit, not the association.
An association's own pet restrictions live in its declaration, bylaws and rules, and nothing in this Act purports to amend a condominium instrument. So a DC condominium's breed or weight limit is not displaced by § 42-3505.10, and would not be even if the subsections were funded — though a renting owner caught between an association rule and a rental statute is a real and awkward position.
Three practical points.
Do not tell owners the caps apply. A manager or board that advises a renting unit owner to stop charging pet rent, or to drop a breed restriction from a lease, on the strength of this Act is advising on an unimplemented provision. That is a written record that is wrong.
Do not amend the association's pet rules to match it either. An association that repeals its own breed and weight limits to “comply” has made a substantive governance change nobody required, and unwinding it later takes the same process that made it.
Service and assistance animals are a separate track and always were. Reasonable accommodation obligations arise under the federal Fair Housing Act and the DC Human Rights Act, and they bind associations directly. Those duties do not depend on this Act being funded, and a breed or weight rule has never been a lawful answer to an accommodation request. That analysis is unchanged.
The wider pattern
This is the second significant DC housing provision reaching community associations that is enacted and inoperative for want of an appropriation. The other is the right-to-charge law for electric vehicle charging ports, whose codified section is headed “[Not Funded]” in the same way.
For anyone reading DC law from outside the District, the lesson generalises: the effective date of a DC act is not the same question as whether a given section of it operates. The codified section heading and the applicability note are where the answer is, and both are published.
What to watch next
A budget and financial plan that includes the fiscal effect. If one appears, the caps and the breed provision switch on, and the October 1, 2026 lease date becomes meaningful for leases entered after implementation. Until then, DC rental pet fees are governed by what came before, and DC condominium pet rules are governed by the condominium instruments.
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