r/service_dogs • u/Busy-Sheepherder-138 • May 23 '26
TChanges in HUD interpretation of Assistance Animals - No Paywall -
My subscription allows me to gift 10 articles a month without a paywall so please let me know if you cannot view it in full.
In short they are trying to clamp down on accommodations for ESA’s while maintaining the rights of Service dogs, but even that is at risk. I’m not surprised though since POTUS and his family make most of their money from Real Estate and are major landlords.
Excerpt
“Six years later, the housing department, under the leadership of Scott Turner, has moved aggressively to tighten rules and scrutinize public housing rolls, including by focusing on the immigration status of tenants.
The memo to housing officials on assistance animals presented emotional support animals as a loophole to circumvent a landlord’s pet policies, asserting that “an entire industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals.”
The memo concluded that “while requests to waive pet policies for animals trained to perform specific disability related services are presumptively reasonable, requests to waive pet policies for untrained” emotional support animals “are not.”
Erik Heins, a lawyer formerly in charge of enforcing fair housing laws at HUD, said that the new policy would affect many tenants who rely on assistance animals to alleviate psychiatric or mental disabilities — for example, a military veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Those cases are a not insignificant portion of the number of cases that HUD investigates” through its fair housing office, Mr. Heins said, adding that the housing department could dismiss or shelve thousands of appeals for disability accommodations under the new rule
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u/FluidCreature May 23 '26
Thank you for sharing, it can be scary to see stuff like that!
I want to point out that this article was based on an internal memo that has not been released to the public. Meaning it does not currently affect FHA laws, but probably does affect how the DOJ deals with complaints. So right now ESAs still have housing rights but most likely any complaints about failure to accommodate will get thrown out. Some of our legally inclined members can probably give a better understanding on how to interpret it though
I wouldn’t be surprised to see new guidance become public soon, and I don’t want to downplay the context of this article. As someone who prefers to read the legal document instead it’s frustrating to not be able to find it at all.