Assistance Animals, Harassment, Criminal Backgrounds & More Hot Topics

Assistance Animals, Harassment, Criminal Backgrounds, and More Hot Topics for Landlords

Hosted by Scott Moore and Sara McCue - E&A Team

This session will cover a variety of hot topics in the fair housing world.  First, the session will discuss requests for assistance animals in housing.  The session will contain multiple examples of common issues that relate to such requests, and attendees will learn the step-by-step process to use when analyzing a request for an animal as an accommodation.  The session will also include a discussion of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (“HUD”) recently issued guidance on assistance animals under the Fair Housing Act.  Housing providers will learn how this new guidance impacts the way in which they evaluate a request for an assistance animal.  In addition to providing an overview of assistance animals, this session will also discuss harassment issues in housing and will explain the liability a housing provider might face as a result of harassment that takes place on the housing provider's property.  HUD's harassment regulations play an important role in this discussion, and attendees will receive an explanation of what constitutes "quid pro quo" and "hostile environment harassment" according to these regulations.  Finally, the session will also cover the use of criminal background screening procedures in housing.  There will be an overview of HUD's guidance on criminal background screening, which will assist housing providers in better understanding how to develop a properly tailored, nondiscriminatory screening policy.