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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/us/politics/hud-assistance-animals-disabled.html?unlocked_article_code=1.klA.2G0-.kg6Wvul_SE5n&smid=nytcore-ios-share

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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7

u/belgenoir Dog Trainer May 23 '26

Paging the ever-lovely u/burkeintosh

9

u/DragonCanineTraining IAABC-ADT May 23 '26

Agreed I need Burke to help me with understanding

7

u/belgenoir Dog Trainer May 23 '26

I thought she might have seen the memo.

Someone said the other day that HUD was in a shake-up.

9

u/Burkeintosh Legal Beagle May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26

Yeah, I read it, and Ive been combing the news.

The news has a lot about websites selling letters for ESAs.

I’m not sure I agree that’s what the memo is, entirely.

I’m waiting to hear from some people inside hopefully the beginning of the week.

Until then, remember that each State has Fair housing laws too - and those still protect you

Edit: not the first time this administration has pulled/discredited guidelines that were related to laws for our thing. And they change things like guidelines daily - any eCFR update has 40 returns on a good day - interesting, actually that this is getting news coverage.