\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration on Friday narrowed the definition of “assistance animal” to those allowed to live with tenants with disabilities in public housing, a move that could lead to the eviction of thousands of animals and their owners.<\/p>\n
In an internal memo obtained by The New York Times, the Department of Housing and Urban Development told leaders in its fair housing office that “effective immediately” the department will exclude emotional support animals and more strictly regulate the definition of a qualified service animal when providing housing for tenants with disabilities.<\/p>\n
Many landlords of public housing units enforce a no-pet policy, or may charge tenants a pet deposit or monthly fee. Under the Fair Housing Act, tenants with disabilities can ask to have those restrictions waived to accommodate their disabilities.<\/p>\n
In first trump administration<\/a>HUD issues guidance to landlords on providing emotional support to animals and other assistance animal<\/a> They were not considered pets and were protected by the Fair Housing Act. Officials noted that emotional support animals provide “therapeutic emotional support” for people with disabilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Six years later, the Housing Department, under the leadership of Scott Turner, has moved aggressively to tighten regulations and scrutinize public housing rolls, including focusing on the immigration status of tenants.<\/p>\n Animal Assistance’s memo to housing officials described emotional support animals as a loophole to circumvent landlord pet policies, stating that “an entire industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals.”<\/p>\n The memo concluded that “although a request to waive pet policies for animals trained to perform specific disability-related services is reasonably reasonable, a request to waive pet policies for untrained “emotional support animals” is not.”<\/p>\n Eric Haynes, the attorney formerly in charge of enforcing fair housing laws at HUD, said the new policy will affect many tenants who rely on assistance animals to alleviate psychological or psychiatric disabilities \u2014 for example, a military veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n “Those cases are not a significant portion of the number of cases investigated by HUD through its Fair Housing Office,” Mr. Haynes said, adding that the Housing Department could deny or defer thousands of appeals for disability accommodations under the new rule.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump administration on Friday narrowed the definition of “assistance animal” to those allowed to live with tenants with disabilities in public housing, a move that could lead to the eviction of thousands of animals and their owners. In an internal memo obtained by The New York Times, the Department of Housing and Urban Development<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[4143,5162,19276,490,32913,3776,3731,2376,22664],"class_list":["post-153219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-verse","tag-animals","tag-assistance","tag-disabilities","tag-housing","tag-hud","tag-limit","tag-moves","tag-public","tag-tenants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153221,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153219\/revisions\/153221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}