IT’S THE LAW
HUD Releases Assistance Animal Guidance By Angelita E. Fisher Law Office of Angelita E. Fisher On January 28, 2020, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development published its long-awaited Guidance on Assessing a Person’s Request to Have an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act. The purpose of the Guidance is to provide landlords with a set of best practices for complying with the Fair Housing Act when evaluating requests for accommodations to keep an animal. Perhaps more importantly for multifamily housing providers, it is meant to guide landlords in distinguishing between a resident with a non-obvious disability who has a legitimate need for an animal and a resident without a disability who simply wants to have a pet or avoid the costs and limitations imposed by landlords such as pet fees or no-pet policies.
The Guidance outlines eight specific questions to assist landlords in determining if the animal is a service animal or a support animal, whether the resident is disabled and whether or not the resident needs the animal because of a disability. These questions serve as a type of flow chart where the yes or no answer sends you to another question or resolves the accommodation request. An additional part of the Guidance defines words and terms landlords commonly use when making an accommodation decision. For example, there are definitions and examples of, “readily apparent,” “performing work or tasks,” “observable and nonobservable disabilities,” and “unique type of support animal.” According to the Guidance, if an animal is not a dog, cat, small bird, rabbit, hamster, gerbil, another rodent, fish, turtle, or a small domesticated animal, it is considered to be a unique animal. If the requested animal is unique, landlords may require residents to demonstrate a disability-related need for the specific animal or the specific type of animal as opposed to documentation that simply states they need an animal. This is good news for those landlords who have residents with snakes as companion animals. Another specific topic in the Guidance is the use of documentation from the internet. The Guidance discusses websites that sell certificates, registrations, and licensing documentation for assistance animals to anyone who answers certain questions or participates in a short interview and pays a fee. In HUD’s experience, such documentation from the internet is not, by itself, sufficient to reliably establish that a resident has a
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Greater Nashville Apartment Association
