[NAGDU] Donald Trump's Civil Rights Office for Housing Has Found the Real Problem: Pets

[Ginger Kutsch]

Donald Trump’s Civil Rights Office for Housing Has Found the Real Problem:
Pets

Source:
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/emotional-support-animals-housing-law/ 

Rachel M. Cohen

March 23 2018, 9:51 a.m.

 

The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the Department of
Housing and Urban Development was designed to confront discrimination,
segregation, and poverty. Instead, under the Trump administration, the
agency is gearing up to confront a much stranger boogeyman: The emotional
support snake.

 

For media and lawmakers, the idea of pet owners selfishly and fraudulently
exploiting legal accommodations for Americans with disabilities has proven
irresistible. It’s a story that hits all the right buttons: entitled and
oversensitive pet owners, smitten with ridiculous animals, lying to
befuddled businesses, and, with the weight of federal law behind them,
forcing workaday Americans to endure the presence of an unwanted critter.  

 

Fear of phony pups and fraudulent felines has been percolating for years.
The idea got a big boost in 2014, when the New Yorker ran a piece featuring
its author successfully testing the proposition that she could bypass many
“no pets allowed” policies with a phony doctor’s note. She brought a
15-pound turtle into a museum, a 26-pound turkey into a restaurant, a snake
into a movie theater, and an alpaca on a train. The journalist showed how
easy it was to convince confused business owners to let her in with her
exotic animals, since the cost of denying someone their legal accommodations
is quite high.

 

The public got another dose of outrage this past January, when a woman tried
to board a flight out of Newark International Airport with a peacock named
Dexter. The passenger insisted her bird was an “emotional support animal,”
which, under the Air Carrier Access Act, passengers can legally bring on
planes. United Airlines didn’t buy it and refused to let her on. A few days
later, United announced that it would be tightening its policies around
companion animals and now requires new documents to verify an animal’s
health and training. Delta Air Lines did the same thing, and both companies
say they’ve seen nearly double the amount of passengers flying with animals
in recent years. “Dexter, unwittingly, may have struck a blow for sanity,”
wrote New York Times columnist David Leonhardt in a recent piece titled,
“It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets.” Leonhardt said he hopes to see
all airlines adopt “fairly strict” rules soon, and that the whole scandal is
a “fascinating case study of how mass cheating can become acceptable.”

 

But while peacocks and “mass cheating” among pet owners make for juicy
stories, civil rights advocates worry about where all this self-righteous
anger is heading. Sources connected to HUD, helmed by Ben Carson, say that
Anna Maria Farías, the federal assistant secretary for Fair Housing and
Equal Opportunity, has said cracking down on assistance animals is a
“priority,” and that HUD may issue new guidance restricting access to
emotional support animals as early as the beginning of April.

 

The federal housing agency has been meeting with representatives from
housing industry groups, including the National Apartment Association, but
it has so far ignored entreaties from fair housing and disability rights
groups to hold similar meetings, representatives of those groups say.

 

“The National Fair Housing Alliance has reached out to HUD about
accommodation verification, but HUD has declined, thus far, to confer with
us regarding this particular matter,” said Morgan Williams, the group’s
general counsel, in a statement to The Intercept. “We expect HUD would meet
with fair housing and disability rights advocates in the course of any
consideration of guidance on reasonable accommodations and assistance
animals under the Fair Housing Act.”

 

Brian Sullivan, a spokesperson for HUD, told The Intercept that the agency
has no comment at this time on whether it plans to issue further guidance on
emotional support animals.

 

The agency’s refusal to publicly comment on the issue, combined with its
meetings with housing industry groups, has advocates bracing for things to
get worse. Under federal law, individuals with physical or mental
disabilities can bring assistance animals with them on planes or keep them
in their homes, and they can also bring trained service dogs to other public
places. But in just a few short years, 21 states have moved to criminalize
the misrepresentation of such animals, with another 13 drafting similar
legislation to take up this year. Advocates note that evidence for a
supposed fake assistance animal crisis has been extremely limited, and many
times outrage can be traced back to mental health stigma more generally.

 

“There are unfortunately people who take advantage of laws intended to
protect people with disabilities, but I think the problem has been blown
completely out of proportion,” said Marcy LaHart, an attorney in Florida who
represents individuals denied reasonable animal accommodations. “What I see
far more is people who have legitimate mental health issues — things like
depression, anxiety, and panic attacks — who are harassed because they don’t
know what they need to do, what they need to provide, to verify their
legitimate need. They’re automatically assumed to be frauds because they
don’t ‘look disabled.’”

 

 

FILE - In this Oct. 8, 2013 file photo, Wallis Brozman is aided by her
service dog Caspin while going through a shopping mall in Santa Rosa, Calif.
Other victims of unruly fake service dogs are real service dogs, said
Brozman, 27, of Santa Rosa. She has dystonia, a movement disorder that left
her unable to walk and barely able to talk. She needs a wheelchair, voice
amplifier and her service dog who responds to English and sign language.
"When my dog is attacked by an aggressive dog, he is not sure what to do
about it and looks to me. It becomes a safety issue, not only for my dog,
the target of the attack, but me if I am between the dogs," Brozman said. 

 

In the popular consciousness, service dogs and emotional support animals are
essentially interchangeable. But legally, they’re very different things: the
former protected by Americans with Disabilities Act and the latter coming
from the Fair Housing Act.

 

The Americans with Disabilities Act and related regulations say that service
dogs, which have been “trained to do work or perform tasks” related to a
specific disability, must be given broad access to public places where pets
are typically not allowed. The ADA sharply limits inquiries related to the
animal. All that can be asked of the owner is whether their dog is needed
because of a disability, and what tasks it has been trained to perform. It’s
illegal to request documentation for the service dog or to inquire about the
owner’s disability.

 

In some ways, the protections of the Fair Housing Act are much broader. The
FHA (in combination with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act) gives
individuals the right to keep “emotional support animals” in their homes,
provided they can produce a letter from a trained professional that says an
animal could help them cope with mental or physical issues, including
anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Unlike the ADA’s
service dogs, emotional support animals do not have to be specifically
trained to perform specific tasks, and they do not have to be dogs.

 

Many high-profile complaints about ostensibly ridiculous support animals
involve encounters during air travel.

 

The confusion over these differences stems in part from the fact that, while
people are generally restricted to keeping their emotional support animals
at home, they can also take them on planes. It’s not a coincidence that many
high-profile complaints about ostensibly ridiculous support animals involve
encounters during air travel: that’s the only public place the law requires
them to be allowed. (Even then, there are some exceptions, such as the case
of Dexter the peacock.) But planes are about the extent of it: People who
rely on emotional support animals can’t take them into restaurants, schools,
and movie theaters, all places where trained service dogs are allowed entry
under the ADA.

 

Now, civil rights advocates say they hear that HUD plans to issue new
guidance soon, in an effort to rein in alleged emotional support animal
fraud.

 

Mary Rosenberg and Ken Walden, two disability rights lawyers who work at the
Chicago-based Access Living with connections to HUD, told The Intercept
their sources say the forthcoming guidance might place new limits on
acceptable breeds of emotional support animals (barring pit bulls, for
example), erect new hoops for who can verify a disability, and prohibit
certain exotic or non-traditional animals.

 

“What we heard was that Anna Maria Farías essentially thinks emotional
support animals might be appropriate for armed military veterans with PTSD,
but not really for people beyond that,” said one national fair housing
advocate, “based on nothing more than her personal whim.”

 

Indeed, this past fall HUD filed a charge against a West St. Paul, Minn.,
apartment complex that ordered an army veteran to get a cat instead of a
dog. “Assistance animals play a vital role in helping our veterans cope with
service-related disabilities,” said Farías in a press release, that
exclusively referred to the tenant as a veteran. HUD declined to make Farías
available for an interview.

 

If HUD does decide to issue new guidance around emotional support animals,
how it will comport with past HUD legal interpretations is not yet clear. In
2013, HUD issued guidance that civil rights groups viewed favorably, which
clarified housing providers’ legal obligations in relation to the Americans
with Disabilities Act. (More than half of all fair housing complaints
concern individuals with disabilities, and nearly half of those involve
animal-related issues.)

 

“One issue with new guidance from HUD is there are a lot of people who
already have emotional support animals, and this could send them into a
limbo,” said Rosenberg. “Whatever the guidance is, it might make it seem
like individuals are not allowed to have the animals they already live with,
which could fuel a lot of anxiety and confusion.”

 

“It remains unclear to us if new guidance would supplant the old guidance,
contradict it, or complement it,” added Walden. 

 

Federal guidance does not carry the same legal power as statutes or
regulations. However, like the Obama-era guidance on transgender bathrooms
in public schools, the promulgation or repeal of federal legal
interpretations can carry political implications and shape policy.

 

The promulgation or repeal of federal legal interpretations can carry
political implications and shape policy.

 

One major reason critics say there’s an urgent need to crack down on alleged
fraud is because of the growth of new websites that sell inexpensive
documentation that falsely identify pets as service dogs or emotional
support animals. Even in apartments where pets are allowed, buildings often
charge tenants a monthly or annual pet fee. But if an animal is considered
an emotional support animal, not a pet, landlords (and airlines) can’t
charge tenants (or passengers) for their animals. Many suspect that
non-disabled individuals are using this new cottage industry to bypass pet
fees, or policies that prohibit pets. The New Yorker article noted that the
National Service Animal Registry, a commercial business that sells
certificates, vests, and badges for helper animals, signed up 11,000
emotional support animals in 2013, up from 2,400 in 2011.

 

But civil rights advocates say there are major misconceptions about these
websites and those who turn to them. While writers like Leonhardt
characterize customers as selfish and intentional cheats, advocates say
plenty of people who turn to these sites have real needs and may not
understand that what they’re doing is illegitimate.

 

“Just because someone uses one of these websites doesn’t mean they don’t
have a disability,” said Williams, of the National Fair Housing Alliance.
“They may have no concept that they’re using a website that other people
might deem problematic.”

 

“Sometimes I have people come to me who have already gotten a certificate
from an online vendor and generally we’ll explain to them that those aren’t
sufficient under the Fair Housing Act,” said LaHart. “We’ll ask them to get
a letter from a provider who can truly verify their need, and that’s pretty
much it, and we’ll proceed from there. Some people don’t have doctors or
were just mortified at having to discuss mental illness. They might think
they’re weak because they suffer from depression. I find that particularly
in the older generation.”

 

LaHart calls the online companies selling fake animal support letters
“crooks” and says governments should be going after the sellers, not the
buyers. “There’s a way to go after those providers and not throw the baby
out with the bathwater,” she said.

 

Disability rights lawyers emphasize that there’s been very little proof of
actual widespread fraud.

 

Aside from pointing to how easy it can be to obtain fake certification and
swag, disability rights lawyers emphasize that there’s been very little
proof of actual widespread fraud. They suspect that housing providers are
more likely looking for ways to limit their liability under the Fair Housing
Act. One major difference between the Fair Housing Act and the Americans for
Disabilities Act is that individuals who have been discriminated against can
only sue for monetary damages under the former. Matthew Dietz, a disability
rights lawyer, told The Intercept that in his practice, the Fair Housing Act
has a lot more teeth. “When I sue a condo association, I sue the association
itself, I sue the property manager, and I sue each and every individual on
the board of directors,” he said. 

 

The Intercept asked the National Apartment Association for statistics or
survey data it uses to show that there’s been an increase in problematic
requests for animal accommodation.

 

Nicole Upano, the NAA’s senior manager for government affairs, responded by
pointing to the 2014 New Yorker article, and added that as of this week, the
National Service Animal Registry had registered 181,984 service and
emotional support animals. “To put this number in perspective, NAA is aware
of more than 20 websites or online providers that offer documentation to
their customers in exchange for a fee,” she said.

 

Though it is possible that some of those websites also sell fake doctor’s
notes, these figures don’t shed real light on alleged fraud in housing
because certified animals — fake or not — are not relevant for securing
accommodations under the Fair Housing Act. In the housing context, emotional
support animals don’t need certification. Tenants just need a third party to
verify that they have a disability and could benefit from living with an
animal.  

 

In addition to lobbying for new federal regulations that would crack down on
alleged fraud, housing industry groups have also been pushing for
legislation on the state level to limit access to emotional support animals.
While many of these efforts are framed as ways to better protect the rights
of those with legitimate disabilities, civil rights advocates worry the new
statutes could have the adverse effect of preventing or deterring people
from receiving accommodations to which they are legally entitled. For
example, new legislation signed this month by South Dakota Gov. Dennis
Daugaard requires tenants seeking to live with an emotional support animal
to provide verification that comes “from a licensed health care provider.”

 

But under HUD’s 2013 guidance, for example, legitimate third parties include
social workers, not all of whom have clinical training. In some cases,
animal trainers, case workers, or even guidance counselors have testified to
an individual’s need for an assistance animal. “We worry these laws could
have a chilling effect on tenants and anyone who was called upon to verify
their need for assistance,” said Walden, a disability rights lawyer.

 

Florida passed a law in 2015 that makes it a crime for people to falsely
claim that they need service dogs. LaHart, the attorney, notes that even
though the law doesn’t apply to emotional support animals, condominium
associations have sometimes pointed to it as a way to scare tenants seeking
accommodations.

 

“Condo lawyers and sometimes board members will try to use the new law as a
way to intimidate people who have asked for a housing accommodation,” she
told The Intercept. “I think there is definitely potential for a chilling
effect. And I never even see the people who don’t come into my office who
get those kind of letters [from condo associations] and just give up.”

 

Proponents of the new restrictions say they don’t necessarily want to lock
people up for their cats and dogs, but that there needs to be more societal
pressure and social stigma on non-disabled individuals who break the laws.
“The moral compass is gone from people,” one Minnesota resident who wants to
see her lawmakers crack down on animal fraud told a local news outlet. 

 

But at the end of the day, advocates say, much of the debate stems from
people questioning both the legitimacy of an individual’s disability, and an
individual’s preference to use animals as their preferred coping mechanism.
National media has certainly done its part to fuel public distrust. While
existing research on the benefits of emotional support animals is mixed and
limited, recent stories have nonetheless taken to casting assistance animals
in a notably negative light. “Therapy animals are everywhere. Proof that
they help is not,” read one Washington Post headline from last summer. “The
Surprisingly Weak Scientific Case for Emotional Support Animals” read
another recent story in Vox.

 

“As a society we treat medication, like Xanax or Prozac, as a more
acceptable response to anxiety and depression, even though the costs are so
much more and the efficacy may not be as much.”

 

Dietz, a disability rights attorney, says these kinds of articles are
missing the point. “As a society we treat medication, like Xanax or Prozac,
as a more acceptable response to anxiety and depression, even though the
costs are so much more and the efficacy may not be as much,” he said. “Just
as you wouldn’t ask someone, “Does your Prozac really help you?” — you
shouldn’t be arguing with someone about if their dog really does provide
them with mental and emotional support. The person with the disability
should be the one in charge of their own health and the way they care for
themselves. And as long as it doesn’t bother anyone else, an accommodation
should be made.”

 

For Dietz, service animals are just the latest in what he sees as a long
history of challenging accommodations for people with disabilities, and he
says it certainly won’t be the last. “A couple of years ago, the biggest
issues were parking spaces,” he said. “People debated whether a person was
really disabled enough to need the parking space, and how visible does the
disability need to be. In five years, it’s going to be whether the person
can really smoke marijuana in their house or is that an unreasonable
request? As time goes on, how we choose to treat people with disabilities
and the accommodations available to them change.”

 

For all the hype and chaos, one team of researchers noted the lack of
objective data surrounding the public’s understanding of service and
emotional support animals, and decided to administer an anonymous online
survey to those who do not have one of their own. Their study, published
last year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public
Health, found that “despite the media’s focus on abuses and false
representations of these dogs, most participants reported feeling the
majority of people are not taking advantage of the system.”