Request For Reasonable Accommodation Service Animal: Fill & Download for Free

Disability accommodation laws are widely misunderstood.Notification was not required. What was required was a written request for an accommodation (i.e., waiver of the “no pets” provision of the lease), which does not have to be granted.You have an absolute right to require that the tenant comply with the “no pets” provision of the lease.If a tenant makes a request for an accommodation to harbor a service animal in their rental unit, that request can be lawfully denied.The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires landlords to make “reasonable” accommodations for a tenant with a disability. That means that a request can be denied as long as the landlord has a reasonable basis to deny it.For example, if the presence of a dog would interfere with the quiet enjoyment rights of other tenants, the request can be denied on that basis.ADA.gov homepage

First let's make sure we are in the same page. Of late there has been misuse of the term “service dog” to cover “therapy” or “comfort” dogs.If it is the latter ADA does not apply.From the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department“Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person's disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA."If we are still talking about a service dog then accommodation is generally required unless some health or safety rule prohibits their use. As others noted that is most likely in medical fields and food handling.

This is for the U.S..For some provinces of Canada, notably Ontario, it’s possible to move an animal in after you have moved in, provided you did not own it prior to the move-in, in contravention of the “no pets” policy, and yet avoid eviction.No. The request is reasonable, and it actually demonstrates a willingness on the part of a landlord to accommodate persons with genuine disabilities.There is no requirement for registration of ESAs (Emotional Support Animals), mostly because the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) does not legally recognize them as service animals.The issue, of course, is not the animals registration, but for your need for the animal.For example, if you were a trainer of legitimate Service Animals, such as a signaling dog for deaf persons, or a guide dog for blind persons, this would still not enable you to keep a service animal in contravention of a “no pets” policy.So it’s possible to have a full fledged service animal, not just a registered but not service trained emotional support animal, and yet be prohibited from keeping the animal in a “no pets” apartment.California.Even in California, which is pretty lenient on the entire idea of an ESAs being permitted when possible, as a reasonable accommodation for a disability, the key point of this is that there exists a disability.This is where your doctor’s note comes in: you have to have a legitimate disability, and the doctor has to be willing to attest that there is a disability requiring an ESA, for there to be a requirement for an attempt at a reasonable accommodation.It’s not about the animal, it’s about you.Your doctor need not disclose the nature of the disability, merely that one exists, and that you need an accommodation for the animal as part of support or ongoing treatment for the disability.Note that the landlord is required only to support a reasonable accommodation, should you provide evidence of a disability in the form of a doctors note.Further, the ADA only requires them to do so when there are more than four units on a given rental property. At four units or less, no accommodation is required.In terms of ESAs, there’s been a lot of pushback from landlords.This is because of tenants who have been trying to use the designation as a dodge to get around the “no pets” clauses in leases, and the pet owners rights groups that have been complicit in abetting such dodges.If you Google for ‘emotional service animal register’, the top four results are advertisements for companies that sell registrations and write letters on behalf of the animal (not from doctors, just from the company) indicating that the animal is necessary.Several of them even “guarantee to get around ‘no pets’ clauses in leases, or your money back”.What this means is that landlords are naturally suspicious any time someone claims their animal is an ESA rather than a pet.They require that a medical doctor put their medical license on the line to attest that the animal is in fact needed as an ESA.Legally speaking, even if you are in a multiunit apartment with greater than four units, you may not be entitled to end run around a “no pets” clause in the lease, even with a doctors note.There are a number of legal cases that are relevant:Janush v. Charities Housing Development Corp. (169 F. Supp. 2d 1133 (ND Cal. 2000)Nason v. Stone Hill Realty Association (Mass. 1996)Bronk v. Ineichen (54 F.3d 425 (7th Cir. 1995))Majors v. Housing Authority of the County of DeKalb, Georgia (652 F.2d 454 (5th Cir. 1981))Zatopa v. Lowe (unpublished; exclusion of animal by type or breed)All these decisions require that an accommodation only be made for a genuine service animal, with specific behavioral training, and that a landlord need not accommodate an ESA.You should also realize that “reasonable accommodation” is not a blanket “get out of jail free” card.What’s reasonable is highly dependent on the situation and circumstances.A landlord need not waive their “no pets” policy “if doing so would cause a great financial or administrative burden, if a ‘no pets’ rule is a fundamental part of the housing program, or if the disabled person is not able to follow general rules of tenancy”.This would include the removal of pet dander from all fixtures, heating ducts, appliances, and so on, following the end of tenancy, in anticipation of a potential future tenant having an allergy to the animal.In other words: if your accommodating your ESA would make the apartment less rentable in the future.If the landlord, however, permits pets with a “pet rent” — which is an additional monthly amount to permit a pet — you may be accommodated, but only if you pay the pet rent to allow for the greater cost of rehabilitation of the unit after the end of your tenancy.In other words: it’s not a way to get out of “pet rents”, either.If your prospective apartment has a “no pets” policy, and it’s not a fundamental part of the housing program, you may be able to negotiate for the allowance of your ESA (or even the allowance of a non-ESA, non-service animal pet) by negotiating an offer to pay a “pet rent”.Finally, you may consider getting your pet training as a genuine service animal, instead of an untrained ESA.Psychological support service animal are a legitimate type of service animal, provided that they have the necessary training.As a landlord, if you came to me with an animal you wanted in in contravention of a “no pets” policy, and you had some “ESA registration”, but were unwilling to provide me with a doctors note?I’d take my chances in court that the court would agree with me that I’m only required to give “reasonable accommodation” to people with documented disabilities.