The Housing and Urban Development has frequently asked questions and answers for those seeking clarification when a tenant presents a request for a support animal. They are not a pet – it is an animal that works, provides assistance, or performs tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or that provides emotional support that alleviates one or more identified effects of a person’s disability.
What Is an Assistance Animal?
An assistance animal is an animal that works, provides assistance, or performs tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or that provides emotional support that alleviates one or more identified effects of a person’s disability. An assistance animal is not a pet.
Obligations of Housing Providers
Individuals with a disability may request to keep an assistance animal as a reasonable accommodation to a housing provider’s pet restrictions.
Housing providers cannot refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services when such accommodations may be necessary to afford a person with a disability the equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.
The Fair Housing Act requires a housing provider to allow a reasonable accommodation involving an assistance animal in situations that meet all the following conditions:
- A request was made to the housing provider by or for a person with a disability
- The request was supported by reliable disability-related information, if the disability and the disability-related need for the animal were not apparent and the housing provider requested such information, and
- The housing provider has not demonstrated that:
- Granting the request would impose an undue financial and administrative burden on the housing provider
- The request would fundamentally alter the essential nature of the housing provider’s operations
- The specific assistance animal in question would pose a direct threat to the health or safety of others despite any other reasonable accommodations that could eliminate or reduce the threat
- The request would not result in significant physical damage to the property of others despite any other reasonable accommodations that could eliminate or reduce the physical damage
Examples
A reasonable accommodation request for an assistance animal may include, for example:
- A request to live with an assistance animal at a property where a housing provider has a no-pets policy or
- A request to waive a pet deposit, fee, or other rule as to an assistance animal.
Click here for the full FAQs:
https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/assistance_animals
