What Does the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 Say about Service and Emotional Support Animals?

Three Classes of Animals

1. Pets are animals living with owners for purposes of love, affection, and company.
2. Emotional Support Animals provide some therapeutic benefit to persons with mental or psychiatric disability, requiring no specific training. The mere presence of this animal mitigates the effects of the emotional or mental disability.
3. Service Animals are any animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a physical, intellectual, or mental disability (i.e., guiding individuals with impaired vision, providing protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching dropped items.)

Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988

• Refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services when necessary to provide equal opportunity to use and enjoy a residential dwelling is discriminatory (i.e., waiver of a "no pets" rule.
• Landlords must modify said policies, practices, or procedures to permit an individual with a disability to use, own, and live with a service and/or emotional support animal when doing so is necessary to provide a tenant an equal opportunity to use and enjoy the dwelling.
• Persons who wish to obtain and live with an emotional support or service animal may have to present documentation from a physician, psychiatrist, social worker, or other mental health professional that the animal provides support which mitigates at least one identified symptom of the disability.
• Landlords cannot:
• Ask a tenant to pay a deposit, fee, or surcharge in exchange for having a service or emotional support animals, even if they require such a practice from owners who wish to obtain pets in their dwelling.
• Require that an emotional support animal have any specific training.
• Require the service or emotional support animal to wear or carry any special collar, harness, vest, emblem, or other means of identifying as such.
• Inquire about the extent of the disability or ask for detailed medical records for the individual requesting the service or emotional support animal.
• A person with a disability may, however, be charged for damages caused to the premises by their emotional support or service animal.