HUD’s New Guidance: All About Service and Assisted Animals and Reasonable Accommodation
Description:
FHA complaints involving denial of reasonable accommodations and disability access account for about 60% of all FHA complaints, and those involving requests for reasonable accommodations for assistance animals are rapidly increasing.
This guideline is presented as a tool for housing providers and people with disabilities to utilize at their discretion, and it outlines a set of best practices for responding to requests for reasonable accommodations to maintain animals in homes where people with disabilities live or want to live. will talk about HUD’s new rule for verifying service or assistance animals.
It addresses the questions to ask while determining if the animal is a service animal or an assistive animal. The session discusses the new timeframe for responding to requests for reasonable accommodation for an animal. Also addressed are different inquiries about the animal’s breed, weight, type, and size.
The other key problem is the verification of the requirement for the service or help of an animal in order to establish a link between the impairment and the need for an animal of some kind. Methods for verifying needs will also be discussed.
Learning Objectives
- Discussed will be a review of the protected classes
- Time frames for decision on reasonable accommodation requests
- Differences between service and assistance animals
- What questions may be asked about disability?
- Concerning accommodation
- Online animal verifications
Why should you attend?
This is a real-world course. It answers questions on the difference between service and assisted animals, how to verify the need for the animal, and all about reasonable accommodation.
Who Should Attend:
- Property Managers
- Property owners
- Leasing agents
- Builders
- Developers
- Realtors
- Housing Authorities
Paul Flogstad
Paul has been involved in the real estate industry for the past 38 years. He has been involved in sales, construction, project management, appraisal, mortgage consulting and brokerage, property management and property management consulting/training. Through his consulting company, Property Management Solutions, he provides training and consulting services nationwide to owners, management companies, multi-housing associations, as well as state and federal agencies. He specializes in fair housing issues and has developed fair housing and outreach programs for governmental agencies as well as conducting seminars which are presented to property management companies, apartment associations and the general public. He also conducts research analysis for impediments to fair housing for grantees of federal CDBG funds. Most recently, he has been a consultant to the State of South Dakota. In this assignment he has developed a program that is one of the first of its kind in the nation. It involves being an Ombudsman for fair housing issues. In this role he takes calls from anyone who may have a fair housing or landlord tenant question. He attempts to resolve the issue before it has to go to HUD. This has been a successful program and he takes over 900 calls a year. For over twenty years was involved in appraisal of residential, multi-family, farm and commercial properties throughout the Midwest. Most recently, he was a consultant for affordable, multi-housing properties in 22 different states. This involved properties in HUD, Rural Development, HOME and Tax Credit programs. He is a certified trainer for a national company which specializes in HUD and Tax Credit education. He holds numerous professional property management designations and currently holds the prestigious RHM designation from the National Center for Housing Management. Paul has served on numerous boards and commissions that deal with real estate, property management and fair housing issues and is in demand as a speaker in the affordable housing industry. Paul just authored a book which was released in January of 2015.