Pets and Landlords
by Michael Schaffer

I’ve been fascinated this year with the paradoxes of how the financial collapse hits America’s pets. On the one hand, the pet industry reports that spending has continued to rise, despite the calamities that have hit other retail sectors. On the other hand, there are countless stories about shelters overrun with abandoned pets, many of them left homeless by recession-hit owners. It’s really a 2009 updating of the classic dichotomy in pet media coverage: One minute, the press is full of gape-jawed stories about pampered pets lounging in $100-a-night spas. The next, there’s tear-jerker coverage of the abused victims of Michael Vick or an Amish puppy mill. To use a probably inapt analogy, it’s kind of a four-legged version of literature’s madonna/whore complex.

As far as spending goes, I’ve squared the circle by looking at who has a choice, and who doesn’t. Marketing research since the collapse began last year suggests that people will scrimp and save for themselves before downgrading their pets: We’ll trade down to Wal-Mart while keeping our animals on the pet equivalent of Whole Foods. But that, of course, assumes people have a choice. The stories about the recession’s animal victims often involve owners who didn’t have a choice–most obviously, those who’ve been foreclosed out of homes and have had to seek housing from pet-unfriendly landlords.

It’s not so much a matter of people giving up the dog because they can’t do the regular feeding and upkeep; it’s that they think the only alternative is to be homeless themselves.

Could that be changing. Via the Seattle Times, here’s an AP story suggesting the soft economy may be prodding landlords–who, after all, need to make money on rental units, too–to open up a bit when it comes to pets:

Apartments.com reported more landlords have loosened their pet policies over the past 18 months. The online apartment listing firm says landlords are responding to the spike in demand from renters searching for pet-friendly digs.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some renters are homeowners displaced by foreclosures who have taken their pets with them, while others are longtime renters with pets looking to upgrade during a soft market.

The story is notably short on any sort of statistics, but it would stand to reason that landlords, like anyone else, would respond to the market. Still, I’d be curious about what people in shelters are hearing in terms of this phenomenon.