2-44 Assistance Animals as a Reasonable Accommodation

• A. Assistance animals are not pets. They are animals that work, provide assistance, or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or animals that provides emotional support that alleviates one or more identified symptoms or effects of a person's disability. Assistance animals – often referred to as “service animals,” "assistance animals," “support animals,” or “therapy animals” – perform many disability-related functions, including but not limited to guiding individuals who are blind or have low vision, alerting individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue assistance, pulling a wheelchair, fetching items, alerting persons to impending seizures, or providing emotional support to persons with disabilities who have a disability-related need for such support.

• B. A housing provider may not refuse to allow a person with a disability to have an assistance animal merely because the animal does not have formal training. Some, but not all, animals that assist persons with disabilities are professionally trained. Other assistance animals are trained by the owners themselves and, in some cases, no special training is required. The question is whether or not the animal performs the disability-related assistance or provides the disability-related benefit needed by the person with the disability.

• C. A housing provider’s refusal to modify or provide an exception to a "no pets" rule or policy to permit a person with a disability to use and live with an assistance animal would violate Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Fair Housing Act unless:

  1. The animal poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others that cannot be reduced or eliminated by a reasonable accommodation,

HUD Occupancy Handbook Chapter 2: Civil Rights and Nondiscrimination Requirements

6/07

2-41

Section 3: Additional Nondiscrimination and Accessibility Requirements for Persons with Disabilities

4350.3 REV-1

Subsection 5: Additional Fair Housing Act Requirements

2. The animal would cause substantial physical damage to the property of others,

3. The presence of the assistance animal would pose an undue financial and administrative burden to the provider, or

4. The presence of the assistance animal would fundamentally alter the nature of the provider's services.

• D. The fact that a person has a disability does not automatically entitle him or her to an assistance animal. There must be a relationship between the person’s disability and his or her need for the animal.

• E. A housing provider may not require an applicant or tenant to pay a fee or a security deposit as a condition of allowing the applicant or tenant to keep the assistance animal. However, if the individual’s assistance animal causes damage to the applicant’s unit or the common areas of the dwelling, at that time, the housing provider may charge the individual for the cost of repairing the damage if the provider regularly charges tenants for any damage they cause to the premises.