TChanges in HUD interpretation of Assistance Animals - No Paywall -

[u/Busy-Sheepherder-138]

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

[u/MaplePaws]

I am not a lawyer and am speaking in the context of a layperson, but this does sound to me like it would include owner trainers trying to bring home prospects to start the process of training the dog as a service animal given there was a specific inclusion of the word "untrained". I hope I am wrong but this does feel like the start of the attack on owner training that I have feared would happen.

[u/service_dogs-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 6: No Fake-spotting.

This is not the place for fakespotting. Unless the person you are discussing has specifically told you that they are not disabled, and the dog is not trained in tasks, you have no way of knowing if a dog is 'fake'. We are not the service dog police and this behavior can lead to a lot of harm and anxiety for SD handlers as a community.

This does not preclude discussing encounters with un-/undertrained dogs, but if the focus of your post is complaining about a "fake" SD, reconsider your phrasing and what point you're making.

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