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Property Management – Canoga Park – Emotional support animals?

CANOGA PARK PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

Do certificates prove tenants’ pets are emotional support animals?

As a housing provider, your decisions regarding whether to accept a tenant’s emotional support animal are guided by the state and federal fair housing laws. Some people confuse these laws with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Service animals are treated differently in some ways under the ADA, which applies to public places, such as restaurants.

However, none of these laws requires a service animal to be “certified.”

Under the ADA, a service animal must be individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities.

Under the fair housing laws, an emotional support animal or other type of medical support animal does not have to be individually trained. All that matters is that the tenant has a disability within the meaning of the fair housing laws and that the animal ameliorates the effects of the disability in some way.

The required paperwork for a tenant seeking to qualify a support animal is a letter from a medical professional familiar with the tenant’s condition that attests to the tenant’s disability, and to the role the animal plays in treating the tenant’s disability.

The question remains whether a service animal “certificate” from a website establishes a tenant’s right to have an emotional support animal. The answer to this question is almost certainly no.

Regardless of the seemingly official nature of the website certificate, you do not know what standards were used in issuing the certificate, if any, or what kind of information the applicant submitted to secure the certificate. First and foremost, a certificate from a website is unlikely to be from a medical professional personally familiar with the tenant’s disability. A website cannot honestly state whether or how this specific animal facilitates his or her disabled owner’s ability to use and enjoy housing — which, after all, is the standard the tenant must meet under the fair housing laws.

Exhert from article By Martin Eichner

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