Disability

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This month’s lesson is the first of a two-part series on assistance animals—a common source of fair housing trouble. Disability discrimination claims account for more than half of all fair housing complaints, often based on disputes over requests by applicants or residents with disabilities to have the assistance animals.

In this lesson, the Coach reviews the requirement under fair housing law to grant reasonable accommodations and modifications for individuals with disabilities.

In this month’s lesson, Fair Housing Coach invites you to be the judge in several recent court cases involving reasonable accommodation requests. Fair housing law prohibits housing discrimination based on disability, and one form of disability discrimination is refusal to make reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.

This month, the Coach focuses on fair housing rules based on disability, the most common source of discrimination complaints and lawsuits faced by multifamily housing communities today. At last count, more than half the formal complaints filed with public agencies and private fair housing organizations were based on disability.

In this month’s lesson, Fair Housing Coach reviews the ongoing debate over medical marijuana—and how it may affect your community. Now that it’s lawful in many states, you may be wondering about whether you must allow use of medical marijuana at your community.

     You’re not alone—it’s a confusing area with conflicting laws, evolving regulatory systems, and little definitive guidance on how to hand...

This month’s lesson addresses fair housing accessibility requirements. Compliance can get complicated because of the number and complexity of federal, state, and local laws and codes that address accessibility in various settings.

     To keep it simple, we’ll focus on the primary law that governs accessibility in multifamily housing communities—the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA). The FHA, which bans housing discrimination bas...

In this month’s lesson, we’re going to address fair housing concerns when dealing with individuals with mental or emotional disabilities.

This month’s lesson tackles one of the most challenging aspects of fair housing law: how to handle requests for assistance animals as a reasonable accommodation for an individual with a disability.

     In general, communities may set their own policies regulating pet ownership, but federal fair housing law does not consider assistance animals as pets, but rather as auxiliary aids that provide assistance to individuals with disabilities.

Effective communications with prospects, applicants, and residents are an essential aspect of all community operations. It’s especially important in your leasing office where miscommunications can undermine your efforts to attract qualified applicants to fill vacancies. Communication problems aren’t just bad for your bottom line: Misunderstandings about leasing opportunities or rental terms often lead to suspicions of discriminatory motives, triggering a fai...

This month, Fair Housing Coach reviews the fair housing implications of how owners and managers handle environmental concerns in the maintenance and upkeep of the community.

Rental housing providers are subject to various laws, health and safety codes, and other regulations that require them to maintain communities in a safe and healthy manner. In general, these rules address noxious substances known to be harmful to human health, such as lead-based paint...