Renters With Pets Organize After Climate Disasters

“It was a big one-bedroom apartment. It had these beautiful views all the way down, like you could see the entire L.A. Basin,” says Katie Clark of her home of 15 years, which burned in the Eaton fire in January 2025. The Eaton fire, along with the Palisades fire, burned 37,000 acres around Los Angeles, destroying nearly 17,000 structures and dumping renters like Katie into a market “unbelievably hostile under the best of circumstances.”

It wasn’t just Clark and her husband who lost a beloved home in Altadena, where they had deep roots—so deep that Katie is a highly active member of the Altadena Tenants Union. The couple also have a terrier, Ginger, a “very good dog,” who constrained their ability to find new housing. Some landlords flatly refused to rent to tenants with pets, while others demanded high pet deposits or monthly pet rents that made already-stratospheric pricing unsustainable. 

“There’s not a world in which we can go someplace without our dog. She’s part of our family,” says Clark, who goes on to explain she got lucky, comparatively. After a brief time in a hotel, she, her husband, and Ginger found a home in Pomona, 40 minutes away from Altadena, which, Clark is quick to say, is still home to her. 

“I don’t think of myself as leaving Altadena,” she explains. “I think of myself as temporarily displaced.”

She’s not alone: 2.5 million people across the U.S. were displaced by climate disasters in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. 

Fifty-five percent of Los Angeles households are renters compared to 35% across the United States. Nationwide, the U.S. Census Bureau found 49.7% of renters, especially households of color, are “cost burdened”; in Los Angeles, that number jumps to 60%. In the immediate aftermath of the fires, rental prices spiked, despite restrictions on price gouging. 

Amid a national housing crisis that’s exacerbated in disasters such as the L.A. fires, Hurricane Helene, and Hurricane Harvey, there’s a particular slice of renters who are sometimes forgotten: those among the two-thirds of Americans who have pets. As renters who have lost everything—or been displaced by those who can afford to pay more—scramble to find new housing, they need their pets, who can provide a concrete source of comfort and benefit their mental health. 

No-pets policies, as well as breed, weight, size, and number restrictions, make it difficult for families to find homes. Even when landlords allow pets, additional deposits and tacked-on, nonrefundable “pet rent” are essentially junk fees. “These layers of fees and charges related to pets, with the majority of those charges not being refundable,” act as “a revenue stream for landlords,” argues consultant Lauren Loney, who specializes in pet-inclusive housing. 

Animal welfare and housing advocates are finally understanding that pets are a housing issue. Renters feel squeezed into housing without pets, or homelessness with them. Housing-related issues, as well as the ability to pay for care, are among the top reasons why people surrender their pets.

Getting to “Pets Welcome”

In a tangled, complicated housing market, this is actually a very fixable problem. 

From a regulatory perspective, pet deposits can and should be limited, along with other rental deposits. States have highly variable laws around how much landlords can collect as a deposit, from three times or more the monthly rent to just one month, many with additional fees applying to pets and furnished units. In addition, similar bounds on “pet rent” can also make housing more affordable, and spare pet guardians the bait and switch of securing a rental only to discover that it’s more expensive than advertised. 

Ross Barker, who leads the Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative at Michelson Found Animals (MFA), argues there’s an distinction between pet-friendly and pet-inclusive housing. 

According to MFA’s research, “pet-friendly” housing can come with barriers such as breed, size, and species restrictions; an ad might say the property “welcomes dogs,” for example, but the fine print may limit that to a single dog under 35 pounds. Other housing might allow cats and dogs, but not parrots and rabbits. 

Barker argues that true “pet-inclusive” housing includes all pets, and the distinction between pet-friendly and pet-inclusive housing needs to be resolved to expand access to the rental market. “About 80% of all rentals allow pets, that sounds pretty good,” he says. “So why are so many people struggling to find housing?” 

Seventy-two percent of renters report barriers to pet-inclusive housing, according to the organization’s research, citing issues such as fees and restrictions that make housing searches challenging. In Los Angeles, they found only 67% of housing allowed pets, and after eliminating properties that charged pet fees or had restrictions on the types of pets renters can have, that number dropped to 8%. 

Resistant property owners might want to reconsider: MFA found that while pet guardians pay an average of $864 in deposits, damage (in the 10% of households where it occurs) costs around $210, with many renters electing to cover these costs themselves. Tenants with pets also stay 21% longer, cutting down on costs associated with turnover.

AB 2216, a 2024 bill in California, would have limited pet rents and restrictions, but it was torpedoed by the commercial housing industry. In Colorado, a law that took effect in 2024 barred additional deposits of more than $300 and pet rent over $35 or 1.5% of monthly rent. A bill in Washington, D.C., currently under congressional review seeks to regulate breed and size limits, fees, and pet restrictions in shelters. In Los Angeles County, Supervisor Hilda Solis introduced a proposal in December 2024 to study issues related to pets and housing.

No Pet Left Behind

Clark is also a strong endorser of tenant unions being a possible solution to this issue, as they allow renters to build strength, solidarity, and connections. “You’re a member of your community, and you shouldn’t be treated like a second-class citizen just because you don’t own property,” she says. 

Being a renter doesn’t make residents less engaged. Clark has served on the Altadena Library Board since 2018 and explains that the library is playing an active role in supporting the community after the wildfires, including setting up wifi hotspots, distributing hygiene kits, and working with L.A. County to provide services to kids displaced by closed schools. 

Looking to the aftermath of the Lahaina fires on Maui, she says renters were “left to their own devices,” a common phenomenon for a community that can be challenging to organize. 

Finally, considering the needs of evacuees with pets needs to be part of disaster planning. U.S. emergency planners learned a stark lesson from Hurricane Katrina, when around 250,000 pets were left to weather the storm, with an estimated 150,000 dying, even as some people refused to evacuate without their pets, while buses and shelters refused to take pets with their guardians. 

The response of a horrified public pushed Congress to pass the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006. The PETS Act requires the inclusion of animals in evacuation and sheltering planning, with some regions, such as New York, implementing highly successful animal disaster planning, while others, such as Texas, are still struggling. 

Hurricane Katrina also changed emergency response for animal welfare organizations such as Humane World for Animals, a major player in disaster response also seen on the ground in Los Angeles, with organizations, for example, freeing room in local shelters by transporting existing populations of adoptable animals out of area and maintaining better documentation on found animals to increase the chances of reunions.  

People in the United States love animals, from A Quiet Place’s Frodo and I Am Legend’s Samantha to real-world counterparts such as Taylor Swift’s cats, Noodle of “bones or no bones” fame, and the therapy llamas of Portland International Airport. That devotion is sometimes expensive—pet guardians spent more than $100 billion on their care in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—and heartbreaking, with animals leading short, vibrant lives. 

Fully pet-inclusive housing would open up opportunities to keep pets and their people securely housed as loyal, long-term tenants building community, just like Clark in Altadena. “There will be another crisis,” Clark says, and “whatever that next crisis is, attention will shift, and all the folks in Altadena are still going to be dealing with this…this is going to be a really long road.”