Assistance animals are a form of disability accommodation which are available to qualified individuals with disabilities. “Disabled people with a genuine need” is a description of the category of people entitled to that accommodation.
This is an area of law which is in flux.
True service animals are trained – almost always by a non-profit organization dedicated to this – and typically wear some kind of identifying garment or harness. Their owners usually carry certifying documents with them in case they need to verify their status. Advocates for service animals fought long and hard for legal recognition and mandated access to public places. The expansion of the definition with trained medical alert dogs, wheelchair assist dogs, hearing-ear dogs, and so forth, along with the burgeoning popularity of therapy animals for everything from PTSD to reading disabilities has created a real dilemma.
As any pet owner knows, ALL pets are “therapy animals” in some sense. Where is the line drawn? At this point, it’s just a big fat mess.
And yes, people who train and people who rely upon true service dogs – which can be very expensive because of how much training does go into them – are suffering from the widespread abuse of the ‘assistance animal’ label. I’ve heard multiple stories of ill-behaved bratty pseudo-assistance dogs annoying everyone in a public space which they had every reason to expect to be dog-free,
…and also available anyone else who pretends to be qualified, and can find a therapist willing to go along with their sham and write a letter. And really, is there even any pretence involved? Under the woolly definition of an ESA, everyone’s pet is really is an ESA.
People who wrote the ADA based on the well-intentioned premise that there should be no enforcement of objective standards and effectively no licensing or policing because that would be too burdensome for people with genuine disabilities were just incredibly naive. I don’t think it ultimately helps disabled people to have a system that’s open to easy abuse and potentially creates hostility and resentment toward all animals.
The thing is, while I sympathize with those who want dog free spaces I have to counter with the fact that, in my state at least, it’s not legal to refuse housing to someone on the basis that they have children. While I like children well enough in the abstract, I personally find them much more difficult to live around on the day by day. I can put a bark collar on a loud dog, I can train them to be better and in theory parents can also do a lot to ameliorate the annoyance children cause–but in my experience more parents fall down on this than pet owners do.
Children scream a lot and that hits every evolutionary panic button a human has. Children are messy, they rampage around, they’re louder than a dog when they stomp around upstairs, they whine and complain and are just a LOT to deal with when they aren’t yours and you’re done with your small human parenting duties. And yet, if I were to rent an apartment I could not safeguard myself from having the noise and disruption of children around. So, as I say, I have sympathy but so long as dogs have a proven utility to humans I can’t see any greater need to restrict people with dogs from access to housing than people with children have.
What is the force that allows a person to “pretend” to have a disability and trick, sham, whatever whatever a medical professional into saying they have a disability requiring accommodation in the support context, but not in the service context?
The dark side of the Force, obviously. Why do you think Emotional Support Animals are no longer allowed on aircraft, if the world is the way you naively imagine it to be, with no abuse of a completely unregulated and unpoliced system?
I’m finding this conversation quite stressful, I must go and spend a few minutes with my Emotional Support Peacock.
Nitpick: I have nothing against social workers, but the fraudulent practitioner you know is not a psychologist.
Service animals are a tricky thing in the hotel industry. My hotel has a pet fee and people claim their dogs are service animals all the time to get out of paying it. We’re leery of the legality of pushing back but yeah. Some poorly trained dog who barks at other guests and has lunged at employees is hard to take seriously as a support dog.
Legally, if any sort of service animal is destructive we can ask them to leave. We have not done so, except the poorly trained one owned by a young woman we banned for her actions.
I have noticed people with legit service animals are starting to bring papers with them, including the couple with the blind wife and seeing eye dog. Any fool could see at a glance that it was legit with the way the woman walked with the dog, but they were anxious to prove the dog was a true blue guide dog.
I expect that is sampling error.
How many people do you think have mobility issues that would reasonably entitle them to a handicap permit, but don’t speak or read English well enough to fill out the paperwork, or don’t have the money for a doctor’s appointment, or pick some other reason? I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m very sure it’s not zero.
That’s the thing, seeing-eye dogs are just astonishing. Preternaturally calm and professional in crowded places where you’d expect any dog to get either excited or anxious.
I think it’s deeply offensive that someone can buy a “service animal” jacket at Walmarts, put it on their unsocialized barking pet that proceeds to poop in the lobby and growl at people, and expect the same treatment. And the way the law is structured, people are afraid to even question it.
It is not sampling error - read the entirety of what I wrote. I have heard people complain about the details of the process ( which would include all the things you mentioned - but I note that my city provides applications in ten languages other than English and has a language interpretation contract to assist those who speak none of those 11 languages ). I have not heard anyone complain about the fact that they cannot get one simply by saying “I am disabled and need a permit” which is comparable to the requirements for service animals. Someone says the dog detects impending seizures, and the dog must be accepted as a service animal.
By “sampling error” I mean that just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, because you don’t hear a random sample of people’s troubles getting handicap permits.
To be clear: I’m not arguing there should be no process. I’m simply saying that making the process more strict to weed out fraud or abuse will also make it more difficult for people who aren’t abusing the system but simply don’t know how to work the system.
We’ve raised four guide dogs, the last of which became a breeder. It is astonishing to go to events with over 100 dogs and none of them bark.
The secret is that any dog who is the slightest bit aggressive gets career changed immediately, and only dogs that are the best become breeders.
I get as mad at fake service dogs as anyone. There is a big difference between getting a dog who has been trained for a year and a half, and who has passed a battery of tests and slapping a jacket on Poochie.
It’s not about allowing “people with kids” to live there, it’s about allowing “people, who are kids,” to live there. The kids have the right, not the parents.
Well, that’s as may be, but when I lived in places/times when adults only communities were a thing, a person who had a baby was given the eviction notice, not just the baby. Something of a distinction rather than a difference, far as I can see. Especially since people with children who tried to apply to live there would be told up front it wasn’t going to happen.
I’ve got good news for you - since you mention your state, I assume you live in the US , where it has been illegal to discriminate against families with children since 1989. Since you presumably lived in the places/times where adults only communities were a thing after you were an adult, you must have been born before 1971. Which means that you can live in a 55 and up community in a few short years- if you aren’t old enough already.
Oh, I’m plenty old enough but own my home in a neighborhood that’s youthifying again–the old farts died off and a lot of young families moved in. I’m fine with the commotion as long as there’s a stretch of yard in between but I cringe at how aggravating that noise would be if it were only one wall away. Yikes. Got a lotta barking dogs in the neighborhood too but that’s all part of living in a community–sometimes things suit you and sometimes they don’t and trying to engineer your environment to suit yourself exactly is likely a mug’s game.
I’m plenty old enough, and I do live in a 55+ community, which I chose specifically because it excluded pets. And when I moved in, I found out that was a meaningless phrase, because anyone who wanted to have a pet could do so with a note from any of corrupt people with MSWs who are themselves pet-lovers, including (though far from exclusively) my former girlfriend. So at the risk of repeating the OP here, I’ll ask again: how can I enforce the regulations restricting animals to actual service animals? Or is that a foolish idea that no community can enforce?
This OP was prompted, if anyone cares, by a dog barking for hours in some house close to me, which I quite reasonably hoped to avoid by living in a community that didn’t allow pets. I had set up my laptop outdoors and was getting down to work in a comfortable chair with a nice cup of coffee when the incessant yapping started and I had to set up again indoors. I don’t know how reasonable it is to tell someone that they must put up with the inconvenience of having a pet if they don’t have one or want one themselves, and prefer to live in an environment that values pet-free living. “Tough–that’s what everyone has to tolerate. Get used to it” doesn’t seem quite adequate as an answer to that point.
You aren’t talking about service animals - you are talking about emotional support animals. They aren’t the same and to be honest, although it’s easy to fake a service animal in a lot of situations , living in a residence most likely isn’t one of them. Much easier in that situation to get an emotional support animal which is essentially a pet, since it doesn’t required any specific training and provides comfort by it’s very presence.
As for what you can do about it- nothing really. Neither can your community - Federal law is going to have to change things. There are a lot of things that contribute to ESAs - one is the fact that the letters are provided to individual building management which doesn’t really give anyone to notice that a huge number of letters are coming from one particular practitioner. The other, probably larger factor is that is the fact that service animals and ESAs are exempt from pet fees, etc - and which is probably what drives a lot of people to get the letter rather than looking for housing that permits pets.
You are correct. I mean “emotional support animals.”
So there’s no practical way in a community that doesn’t allow emotional support animals? That’s what I seem to be learning from this thread and from living here.
If I started a housing development call ed"NO PETS ALLOWED VISTA" someone could move in with his pet rhino, get a note from my former girlfriend, and let Old Horny bellow all night long. Doesn’t seem right to me, but what do I know?