How it works

Stage 1: booking

When you book an appointment you give your name, contact details, Texas county, the animal you live with, and a short description of what’s happening with your housing. It takes about five minutes.

Nothing you enter is a diagnosis and nothing on it decides your outcome. It exists so a coordinator can tell whether a clinical appointment is worth your money, and so the therapist walks into the appointment already knowing why you’re there.

Stage 2: screening

A coordinator reads every intake within one business day. Three things can happen.

• You’re scheduled. You get appointment times with a therapist licensed in Texas.
• We ask a follow-up question. Usually about your county, your housing type, or an unusual species.
• We tell you not to bother. If your goal is flying, restaurant access, or a hotel stay, a letter won’t help you, and we would rather say that for free than take your money. The same applies if you’re already seeing a therapist who could write the letter themselves.

Stage 3: the appointment

A live video or telephone appointment, typically 5 to 10 minutes, with a mental health professional licensed by the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council. It’s a clinical evaluation, not a formality. Expect questions about:

• your symptoms, how long they have lasted, and how they affect daily activities such as sleeping, working, concentrating, leaving the house or caring for yourself;
• any past or current treatment, medication or diagnosis;
• your animal, how long you’ve lived together, and specifically what changes when the animal is present or absent;
• whether anything else would work as well, since an accommodation has to be connected to the need.

The therapist can conclude that you don’t have a condition that rises to the level of a disability, or that your animal isn’t connected to it, or that a different form of support is more appropriate. That’s a real possible outcome, and our refund policy covers it.

Stage 4: the letter

If the therapist supports the accommodation, they draft and sign the letter themselves, on their own letterhead, with their license type and number. You receive it as a PDF, usually one to two business days after the appointment.

The letter states that you’re their patient, that you’ve a condition that substantially limits one or more major life activities, and that the animal is connected to that condition. It doesn’t include your diagnosis, your records, or your treatment history, because your housing provider isn’t entitled to those. See the full anatomy of a valid letter.

Stage 5: your landlord

You submit the letter as part of a reasonable accommodation request. Put it in writing, keep a copy, and expect a conversation rather than an instant answer. We include a written guide, and there’s a free walkthrough with sample wording on our accommodation request page.

If a landlord comes back asking for a clarification within a reasonable window, one revision is included in your fee. If they ask for something the law doesn’t entitle them to, such as your diagnosis or your medical records, our guide explains how to say no.

Renewals

Federal law doesn’t put an expiration date on the letter, but many Texas landlords ask for documentation dated within the last twelve months, and some ask again at lease renewal. If you expect to need documentation over time, the most durable answer is an ongoing relationship with a therapist who knows you, whether that’s one of ours or a therapist you find independently.