VetsFirst has long supported efforts to ensure that disabled veterans have access to assistance animals. We were strong advocates for legislation passed in 2012 that ensured access to VA facilities for veterans who use service animals. Unfortunately, veterans with disabilities continue to face barriers in many other areas, including housing.
Late last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued new guidance concerning service animals and other assistance animals used by people with disabilities in housing and HUD-funded programs. Three huge federal laws—the Fair Housing Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act—have provisions covering service or assistance animals for people with disabilities.
The ADA definition of “service animal” includes only dogs and specifically excludes emotional support animals. On the other hand, under both the Fair Housing Act and Section 504, persons with disabilities may request a reasonable accommodation for any assistance animal, including an emotional support animal. In some particular facilities, such as housing sales and leasing offices, public housing agencies or housing associated with a university or other place of education, housing providers must meet their obligations under both the ADA, and the Fair Housing Act and Section 504.
Both the Fair Housing Act regulations and Section 504 housing regulations forbid discrimination in housing because of disability. And, many housing providers around the nation prohibit residents from owning pets. However, this new HUD guidance document emphasizes the point that assistance animals for persons with disabilities are not pets. They are working animals, and they serve persons with many disabling conditions today, including pulling a wheelchair, alerting persons to impending seizures and providing emotional support to persons who have a need for such support.
If you are a person with a disability who uses an assistance animal of any type, remember two principles: you do not have to prove to a landlord that your assistance animal received training and/or certification of any sort; and, even if “No Pets Are Allowed” in the housing complex, submit a written request for a “reasonable accommodation,” because your assistance animal is not a pet. Save a copy of all your paperwork, too.
Strangely to me at least is the narrow ADA definition of a service animal, which is “any dog that is individually-trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual or other mental disability.” These regulations continue that “the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition.” Thus, the ADA definition covers only “trained dogs” and eliminates emotional support animals as service animals under its jurisdiction.
ADA-covered entities may pose just two questions to disabled individuals: Is this a service animal that is required because of a disability? And, what work or tasks has the animal been trained to perform? Further, the entity may not require any documentation of the answers to these two questions.
Although I have never had an assistance animal during my quadriplegic life, it seems to me that individuals with disabilities have an easier time with them where they live and work, and perhaps less acceptance when they are outside their and their assistance animal’s comfort zone. After all, everyone enjoys petting a handsome dog. However, I was chastised a number of years ago when I did just that. So, I’ll sign off with a friendly “hands off!” “That dog is working.”
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee