Understand how to evaluate requests for emotional support animals as classroom accommodations

Abstract

The Fair Housing Act requires housing providers to offer reasonable accommodations to residents with disabilities to enable those residents an equal opportunity to use and enjoy their dwelling. The courts and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have ruled that campus housing is a dwelling under the FHA. And HUD and some courts have ordered housing providers to modify “no pets” rules as a reasonable accommodation for residents who rely on emotional support animals to ameliorate the effects of psychiatric disabilities. As a result, an increasing number of students now live in campus housing with their emotional support animals.