Settling a Pet Into Temporary Housing: What a FEMA Unit's Own Terms Say About Your Animal

FEMA’s fact sheets for its transportable temporary housing units allow up to two domesticated animals per unit. The animals must wear ID tags, be up to date on their shots and stay on a leash, and they cannot be left unattended outside. If the unit is in a commercial park, the park’s pet policy applies too. Those fact sheets were written for specific disasters, so the document that governs your household is the Temporary Housing Agreement or Revocable License you signed. Read it, find the sentence about animals, and ask your caseworker or the FEMA Helpline (800-621-3362) about anything it leaves out.

If your displacement involves an abusive partner, read this first. The NNEDV Safety Net Project’s Tools for Safer Browsing page advises using a device and accounts the other person cannot access, such as a library computer or a friend’s phone. It warns that making changes will often alert the other person and can sometimes erase evidence, and it says advocates can help you make a safety plan. The National Domestic Violence Hotline’s Get Help page lists three ways to reach an advocate: call 1.800.799.SAFE (7233), chat at thehotline.org, or text START to 88788. As of September 29, 2026, the same page also listed The Deaf Hotline by video phone at 855.812.1001, StrongHearts at 844.762.8483 and the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline at 866.331.9474. Nothing on this page replaces talking to an advocate.

Find out which housing you are in

The rules below belong to one FEMA program, and that program does not run in every disaster. FEMA’s Individual Assistance Program and Policy Guide (IAPPG) says FEMA may provide direct temporary housing only when eligible applicants cannot use rental assistance to find housing. It also says FEMA authorizes direct housing only on a written request from the state, territorial or tribal coordinating officer or the governor’s or tribal chief executive’s authorized representative.

Inside the program, the pet answer differs by arrangement:

• A transportable temporary housing unit. The IAPPG defines this as a readily fabricated dwelling, such as a recreational vehicle or manufactured housing unit, that FEMA purchases or leases and provides for a limited time. The pet paragraph below is written for this arrangement. The unit can sit on your own property, in a commercial park or on a group site FEMA builds.
• Direct lease, or multi-family lease and repair. FEMA contracts for an existing property. FEMA’s Florida direct lease fact sheet (April 17, 2025) says eligible properties may include single-family homes, apartments, condominiums or townhouses, and that applicants must agree to terms set by FEMA and the landlord. Two parties means two sets of terms.
• A unit in a commercial park. FEMA’s commercial site fact sheet (February 3, 2021, Louisiana) says applicants may need a background check and must comply with the park’s rules and regulations. FEMA’s January 27, 2025 fact sheet says renters are told the name of the commercial park or alternative site where they will live.

The IAPPG makes the deference explicit. Occupants must comply with all rules for a group site or commercial park and with local ordinances. For units on sites not owned by FEMA or the occupant, such as commercial parks, the occupant must comply with the owner’s lease or terms of use.

Before you rely on any number, work out whether your unit is federal or leased, and whether the ground under it is yours, a park’s or a group site’s. That decides whose pet rules apply.

What FEMA publishes about your animals

FEMA’s fact sheet FS-45 answers its question about keeping pets in the unit in one paragraph. It has five separate obligations:

1. You can keep up to two domesticated animals in the unit.
2. They must always wear ID tags and be up to date on their shots.
3. They cannot be left unattended outside the unit and must always be on a leash.
4. You are responsible for cleaning up after them, inside and outside the unit.
5. In a commercial park, the last rule hands the question to the park: “If you are in a commercial park, you must abide by the park’s policy on pets.”

FS-41, released the same month for the same declaration, lists the number among its license terms: “Up to two pets are allowed.” The next sentence matters for leased housing: “Direct lease or multifamily lease and repair applicants must follow the guidance per their licensing agreement.” So the two-pet figure belongs to the transportable-unit form of assistance. For a household FEMA placed in a leased apartment, FEMA sends you to your own agreement.

The number is not new. A July 31, 2018 fact sheet for the Hurricane Harvey Texas declaration carries the same “Up to two pets are allowed” sentence. That version also opens the item with a smoking prohibition, which neither 2025 Tennessee sheet carries. Editions differ, which is why the governing document is the one with your signature on it.

The IAPPG says occupants must agree to FEMA’s rules, terms and conditions, by signing a Temporary Housing Agreement or Revocable License, before they move in. If the animals are not addressed in your agreement the way the fact sheet describes, the agreement counts.

Tags and shots

The FEMA documents cited here do not name a vaccine, a schedule or a certificate, and they do not say who checks. Rabies requirements for dogs and cats are set by state and local law, not by FEMA, so your state or county animal-health authority answers the shots half.

Both requirements hit hardest when the paper proving them was in the house that flooded or burned. Our guide to getting your pet’s records when the clinic is closed or destroyed works through the fallback chain. For the tag, what to put on a pet ID tag for a disaster covers the fields and recommends a phone number you answer plus a second number belonging to someone outside the affected area, rather than a home address.

That advice does a second job in temporary housing. A tag or microchip record pointing at a house that no longer stands will not bring a found animal back to where you are now. FEMA’s fact sheet requires a tag and says nothing about whether what is engraved on it is still true. Our microchip registration audit covers the lookup and the fields in the record.

Plan for the door you do not control

FEMA’s FS-41 says: “FEMA retains the right to enter the unit to make inspections or repairs with 24-hour’s notice. In case of an emergency, no notice is required.”

FEMA’s Florida maintenance FAQs (January 15, 2025) add that every unit is inspected monthly, that contractors will contact you at least 24 hours ahead, and that keeping your contact information updated with FEMA matters for that reason. They define a maintenance emergency as any issue that directly affects health, safety or security, and they give as examples a major water or sewage leak, an HVAC failure during exceptionally hot or cold weather, and a major electrical malfunction not caused by the power company. In a maintenance emergency, occupants are told to evacuate the unit and call the maintenance hotline at 888-211-0338, and a contractor responds within two hours. FS-45 describes the monthly inspection as checking the stove, refrigerator and heating and air conditioning, the level of the unit on its blocks, leaking pipes and doors that may not open or close properly.

None of these documents mentions an animal in connection with an entry, an inspection or a repair. FEMA’s pet paragraph is about leashes and cleanup, and its entry paragraph is about notice. Nothing joins them.

What follows is our reasoning, not a FEMA protocol. A transportable unit is a small dwelling with one habitual exterior door. Over months, someone who is not part of your household will open that door, sometimes on a day you were told about, sometimes with no notice, and sometimes while you are away. In a house, a loose cat has rooms to be lost in. In a unit, it is a few feet from an open door. A closed front door is not containment, because FEMA and its contractors can enter. What works is a second layer: a crate, a pen or a closed interior door between the animal and the entrance, in place whenever an entry could happen.

• Tell FEMA in writing that animals live in the unit. Use the channel where you keep your contact information current, and ask how contractors are briefed. A missed 24-hour call is an entry you did not prepare for.
• Use the second barrier every time you leave, not only on inspection days. The unannounced entry is the one you cannot schedule around.
• Make sure the barrier does not trap the animal in heat or cold. An HVAC failure in extreme weather is one of FEMA’s own named maintenance emergencies, and the contractor response window is two hours. Whatever you build has to keep the animal safe if the unit gets hot or cold before anyone arrives.
• Make the barrier undoable in seconds. For a health, safety or security failure, FEMA’s instruction is to evacuate the unit. A crate you open, a pen you step over or a door you pull is containment. A wedged, screwed or blocked barrier is a trap the first time you have to leave in a hurry.
• A note on the door helps, but it is not containment.

Our page on pets during gutting and mold remediation reaches a related conclusion for the damaged house, where doors stand open all day for a crew. The temporary unit is the mirror image: the door is normally locked, and a third party with a key opens it on a schedule you do not set. The mitigation is the same.

The unit is not a storm shelter

FEMA’s FS-44, Transportable Temporary Housing Units and Severe Weather (January 30, 2025), says the units are designed as safe short-term housing but that severe weather can still damage them. Its instructions to occupants:

• “Never take shelter in the unit during high winds, a tornado, hurricane or flood.”
• Monitor the weather radio every unit carries and local media, and comply with evacuation orders.
• Follow the guidance of local officials.
• Plan multiple evacuation routes to several safe shelters, so road closures do not trap you.
• “Do not leave your pet(s) behind in the unit.”

For tornadoes, FS-44 says to evacuate the unit immediately on a warning, take shelter on the lowest floor of a nearby sturdy building or storm shelter away from windows, and not take shelter in a vehicle.

The join with the previous section is ours: containment has to come apart in the time a warning gives you. A cat wedged behind a permanent barrier, in a unit you have been told never to shelter in, on a night you have been told not to leave the animal behind, satisfies one FEMA instruction by breaking another. Keep the carrier out, open and lined with bedding that smells like the animal, and keep a harness and leash by the door rather than packed. Our page on getting a hiding or scared cat into a carrier treats confining the cat early as the whole game, and our comparison of harnesses a panicked dog cannot back out of covers the dog half.

Our tornado warning in a mobile home with pets page covers this scenario in detail, and it sets the decision point earlier than FEMA’s sheet: the watch, not the warning, for a household that has to load animals and drive. Nothing in FEMA’s sheet conflicts with leaving sooner. Our RV pet emergency checklist covers an air conditioner failing at a hookup, and its heat guidance applies to any occupant of a transportable unit, since FEMA names HVAC failure as a maintenance emergency for both types.

Group sites and green space

If FEMA builds a group site, the IAPPG names pets once, in its site-design considerations: “FEMA will incorporate separate green spaces into group sites to accommodate households with children or pets.”

That is a commitment about how the ground is laid out, not about what an animal may do on it. Neither sentence suspends the leash rule or the unattended rule. Treat a green space as a place to walk a leashed animal and pick up after it, and ask site management what it adds.

The IAPPG describes general violations as conduct violations involving the breaking of rules set by the commercial park or other site management, which are included in the Temporary Housing Agreement or Revocable License. Its examples include excessive noise, “Unleashed or unattended pets outside of the THU”, damage beyond normal wear and tear, and failure to keep the unit and its surroundings reasonably clean and sanitary. Because the park’s rules are pulled inside your FEMA agreement, “the park allows it” and “my agreement allows it” are not two independent questions. What a breach means for your household is between you, your caseworker and your license.

Money, briefly

One pet line appears in the direct-housing money rules, and it is an exclusion. In its Multi-Family Lease and Repair leasing section, the IAPPG says: “FEMA will not pay for background checks, credit checks, application fees, or pet deposits.” The Direct Lease section repeats it with the items in a different order.

Both appearances carry an endnote about landlords and service animals under the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. sections 3601 to 3619): landlords may not prohibit service animals or charge pet rent or a pet deposit for them. That endnote is about leased property, not transportable units, and it does not address FEMA’s two-animal figure. Whether an animal is a service animal, and what a landlord may do, are legal questions this page does not answer.

The rest of the federal money question is on what FEMA publishes about pet expenses. Read it before you spend money expecting it back.

Settling the animal

The structural rules are half of a long displacement. The other half is an animal that has stopped eating, taken to hiding under a bed or started using a corner of a room that is not yours.

AVMA’s recovery guidance covers the basics:

• Release cats, dogs and other small animals indoors only, because they could meet dangerous wildlife and debris if allowed outside unsupervised and unrestrained.
• Familiar scents and landmarks may have changed, which can confuse animals.
• Allow uninterrupted rest and sleep so animals can recover from the trauma and stress.
• Disrupted routine can be the biggest cause of stress, so re-establish a normal schedule as quickly as you can.
• If you notice signs of stress, discomfort or illness, contact your veterinarian to schedule a checkup.

AVMA’s indoors-only advice and FEMA’s leash-and-never-unattended-outside rule answer different questions, but together they leave little room for an animal to be loose outside a temporary unit. AVMA also tells owners to survey the area inside and outside the home for sharp objects, dangerous materials, dangerous wildlife, contaminated water, downed power lines and other hazards. AVMA writes that about your home. Applying it to the ground around a unit parked on a destroyed house’s slab is our extension, but an obvious one: that ground is a debris field, and your animal is leashed on it twice a day.

Deeper behavior work is a page of its own. Pet behavior changes after a disaster covers housesoiling, clinginess, the dog that cannot be left, the cat you have not seen since Tuesday, and why serial displacement is not the same problem as one move. Litter equipment is covered in litter box options for a shelter-in-place.

What FEMA does not say

Knowing the gaps keeps you from planning around a rule that does not exist.

• Which animals count. FS-45 says “domesticated animals” and stops. The IAPPG’s direct housing section does not use the words dog or cat. FEMA’s household-pet definition with a species exclusion list belongs to a different program, Public Assistance, and should not be carried across to a housing unit. It is covered on what FEMA publishes about pet expenses. Ask your caseworker.
• A third animal. No document cited here states what happens to a household with three animals, or publishes a waiver or approval route for the count.
• Service or assistance animals in a unit. None of the fact sheets addresses it, and the IAPPG’s only service-animal reference in a housing context is the Fair Housing Act endnote about leased property. The IAPPG does say applicants may request reasonable accommodations to access FEMA programs and services at any time, so put the question to FEMA directly.
• Any park’s actual pet rules. Several of the cited documents route you to the park, and none reproduces a park’s policy. Get yours in writing from the manager.
• Your declaration. Every fact sheet cited here was written for a named declaration and published by a named FEMA region.

Checklist for the first week

• Read your Temporary Housing Agreement or Revocable License and find the sentence about animals. If there isn’t one, ask your caseworker where the pet terms live.
• Confirm which arrangement you are in: a FEMA-owned transportable unit, a direct lease, or a multi-family lease and repair property.
• On a commercial park or group site, get the pet rules in writing and ask your caseworker how they interact with your license.
• Put a tag on every animal, and check that what is engraved on it is current.
• Start reconstructing vaccination records now, before someone asks.
• Tell FEMA, in the channel where you keep your contact details, that animals live in the unit, and keep your phone number correct so the 24-hour call reaches you.
• Set up a second containment layer between the animal and the exterior door whenever the unit is empty, and make it reversible in one motion.
• Keep the carrier out, open and lined with familiar bedding, and keep a harness and leash by the door.
• Walk the ground around the unit yourself before the animal does, and again after any contractor visit that leaves material behind.
• Rebuild the feeding, walking and sleeping schedule in the first days.
• Choose your severe-weather destination and confirm with your county or parish emergency management agency that it takes animals, before a storm is forecast.

Where to go next

This page is the occupancy spoke of our pet emergency playbooks hub.

• Money: what FEMA publishes about pet expenses.
• Lodging: the pet-friendly hotel evacuation checklist and hotel pet policy during an evacuation, which cover count caps, size rules and leaving an animal alone in a room.
• Weather: tornado warning in a mobile home with pets.
• The animal: pet behavior changes after a disaster.

The most useful thing to do this week: read your own agreement, find the pet sentence, and ask your caseworker one written question about the maintenance door.