Know Your Rights: Rental Housing and Assistance Animals

Dogs, cats, and other animals can be truly wonderful pets and provide us with the same care and love we show them. For some of us, however, these animals are more than pets. For example, they can perform tasks or provide emotional support for a person with a disability. In such situations, the animal is an assistance animal, not a pet.

Assistance animals include service animals as well as other trained or untrained animals that do work, perform tasks, provide assistance, or provide emotional support for individuals with disabilities. In 2020, HUD issued guidance to landlords, property managers, and other housing providers about evaluating a person’s request to have an animal as a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act.

Reasonable accommodations are changes, exceptions, or adjustments to generally applicable rules, policies, practices, or services that are necessary to enable individuals with disabilities to equally use and enjoy housing. A request to have an assistance animal in a building that has a no-pets policy would be a request for a reasonable accommodation.

Many of the cases the Fair Housing Project at NHLA handles involve reasonable accommodation requests for individuals with disabilities, and often these requests are for assistance animals.

A service animal is any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of someone with a disability. People who experience disabilities like blindness or epilepsy, for example, may use service animals to perform certain tasks for them.

Assistance animals also can be other types of animals and do not have to be specifically trained, as long as the animal does work, performs tasks, provides assistance, and/or provides therapeutic emotional support with respect to the individual’s disability. People who experience disabilities such as depression or anxiety may use assistance animals to provide emotional support to lessen the symptoms of their disabilities.

The Fair Housing Act requires landlords to make exceptions to pet rules to accommodate individuals with disabilities who need assistance animals. For example, landlords cannot deny an individual’s request for an assistance animal by citing a no-pets policy. Landlords also cannot charge a pet deposit or pet rent for an assistance animal or require the animal to have a special certification or training. Some landlords may try to limit the breed or weight of the assistance animal, such as by requiring all dogs to be under 35 pounds. This requirement also would be illegal.

A landlord may be able to prohibit a particular assistance animal if the animal poses a direct threat to the health and safety of other residents or staff in the building. But the landlord cannot make that decision based on generalizations about certain dog breeds, for example. The decision must be based on the behavior of the specific animal you are requesting to keep in your home.

When asking for a reasonable accommodation from your landlord to have an assistance animal live with you, the request does not have to be in writing. However, making the request in writing is recommended so that it is clear what you asked for and when you made the request. You do not have to use a specific form given to you from the landlord.

You should tell your landlord that you are asking to keep the animal because of your disability. You will need to explain how the animal helps you, such as by improving the symptoms of your disability or performing certain tasks for you, if your disability and disability-related need for the animal is not obvious or not already known to your landlord. You do not need to tell your landlord your specific diagnosis or provide detailed medical records.

If you have questions about what you need to tell your landlord when asking for an assistance animal or your landlord denied your request to have an assistance animal live with you, contact us. NHLA’s Fair Housing Project is here to help!