Unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. A couple of glimmers of hope, though.
First of all, this created such a problem on airlines, that the rules did recently change, and ESAs are no longer allowed on airlines, only service animals. That precedent suggests that it’s possible that the widespread abuse that is obviously happening will create sufficient backlash that at some point the legislation that forces all no-pet housing to accept ESAs (the Fair Housing Act) might be changed. The other alternative is that perhaps people might come to their senses and realize that the lack of effective regulation or certification/licensing is really not helping disabled people with a genuine need, and tighten things up to stop the abuse of the system.
In any event, having an ESA or service animal (whether genuine or not) does not give you carte blanche to have a dog that barks excessively and creates a nuisance. A first step would obviously be to talk to your neighbors. In my experience persistent barking often happens when people leave their dogs outside and go out, and (if they are decent people) they just may not realize it is happening. If that’s not productive, the next step would be to look into state and local laws concerning unreasonable noise - this is obviously a common issue, so everywhere has legislation and some kind of procedure to file a complaint.
in the example given above, it’s much less complicated to take my stuff indoors and play a little music to drown out the barking serenade. Which is of course what pet owners depend upon. “What kind of a nut files a complaint with the cops about Fluffy making an isolated bark or two? What assholes! I’ll fight this to the Supreme Court before I bow to tyranny…” etc.
And the sad thing is, he’d probably win in the Supreme Court.
You seem to be starting from a pretty defeatist attitude, assuming that all people are assholes without bothering to find out. Set the “bogus ESA” suspicion aside for now, and approach this just as you would with a neighbor in an area where pets are allowed.
I think it’s usually pretty easy to distinguish between happy interactive barking (which is a normal part of life and doesn’t annoy most people too much) and persistent non-stop barking for an extended period. As I said, the latter is often when people have put their dog outside and gone out, and they just may not realize it’s happening. Don’t rule out the possibility that an amicable approach to your neighbors might solve your problem overnight.
This really isn’t about my personal problem–I just mentioned that as an aside about how this OP got conceived. This is in Great Debates because I really am interested in learning if there are any useful practical arguments to made for a community legally telling its members that they may not have pets other than service animals. Is it possible? How would I go about that?
Most of my neighbors are assholes, and it’s usually far more trouble to ask them to change their ways in almost anything than to try to ignore them. As you might guess from the responses in this thread, most pet-owners are inclined to say “Too bad if my pet is annoying you. Learn to live with the annoyance, jerk. Have a nice day.”
I didn’t get that at all from the responses in this thread. Not a single person said anything along those lines.
Which leads me to wonder how much of this
is based on your perception of them, and what assumptions you made, vs reality.
Now, personally, I think it should be the dog that is licensed, and it shouldn’t matter what the person’s need for it is. I think that there should be a training and certification for emotional support animals, to ensure that they are well behaved.
I don’t think you should have to justify your need for them to neighbors or businesses, but I do think that they should be non-disruptive when brought into non-pet friendly places.
You didn’t trouble yourself to read even the first response to the OP? in its entirety it reads:
which I took to mean pretty much what I’ve paraphrased.
You seem unusually determined not to take my point, which is NOT to solicit your personal opinions regarding pet-owners and their rights. It IS to see if I can find a way to live legally in a community in the U.S. with stricter enforceable regulations restricting animals to those that qualify as trained and certified service animals.
It seems to me like as a result of this thread you could know quite a lot, if you wanted to. The reason you picked a rhinoceros was because of how facially unreasonable that would be. How much, one might say, of an undue burden it would create on the community. The building would have no obligation to make an unreasonable accommodation. You are safe from rhinos.
What is actually true is that if someone has an animal that a medical professional has said is medically necessary to assist them with some qualifying disability, they’re allowed to have a pet if that would be reasonable. Like a dog, which probably 90% of these animals are. Which means sometimes you hear dogs barking, which I appreciate is disturbing. Since you’re also in the statistically unfortunate position of being totally surrounded by assholes, it sounds like just having a conversation about the noise is off the table. But there are perhaps solutions to that problem that don’t involve invoking bellowing rhinos in order to advocate for making life harder for a bunch of people with disabilities. No?
One workaround would be to buy a home in an area where property is cheap enough to allow you to have a huge buffer zone wrt neighbors. I can walk out our front door and go north, east, west, or south for anywhere from 100 yards to 1 mile before encountering a neighbor. When I do encounter a neighbor, they tend to be the type of person who, like me, doesn’t want to encounter a neighbor.
The qualification for “service animal” should be that, when the owner and the animal are out and about together, the animal actually performs some kind of task that the owner cannot perform without said animal. Trying to get an ostrich through a TSA checkpoint does not, in my strong opinion, deserve any consideration in that regard.
In order to be licensed as a service animal that is allowed anywhere, I think a dog should be tested to an appropriate objective behavioral standard. If the training, testing & licensing requirement is an undue burden on people with disability, that burden should be met with public financial assistance. It should be illegal to misrepresent an uncertified dog as a service animal, with heavy fines. The misguided ADA philosophy that even questioning a dog’s status is wrong needs to be discarded. Should we abolish passports and passport control because carrying them is inconvenient to people who have a right to enter the country? What could possibly go wrong! Obviously random strangers have no right to accost you and challenge your service dog’s status. But appropriate people at appropriate times - hotel check-in staff, for example - should be able to verify a dog’s status without fear of an ADA lawsuit.
With untrained assistance animals (including ESAs) the important question is under what circumstances it’s reasonable for a disabled person’s need to override the desire of a community to be dog-free. It seems to me that it’s reasonable that this should only happen when the need is significant. After all, someone with a minor need is faced only with the prospect of a more limited selection of accommodation that does allow pets. Under the current system, pretty much anyone can get a medical profession to give them a diagnosis of (say) mild depression, and thus to classify their pet as an ESA. This is beyond what I think most people would call reasonable. Of course, the devil is in the details of what constitutes a significant need.
My other thought is that where there’s a financial motivation to avoid pet fees, an assistance animal should not be exempt from the fees. Instead, they should receive a subsidy from the Federal government to offset the fees. The economics would be identical for anyone with genuine need. But the prospect of defrauding the Federal government might make people think twice about abusing the system.
They actually may be allowed in the passenger area - at least some airlines allow dogs and cats to fly ( counting the kennel as a carry-on bag) subject to breed and size restrictions. But there is a fee, just like there always was for pets flying in the cabin.
Yes. Essentially they have no special status - they are just treated as pets. And so far as I’m aware an airline can have whatever pet policy it chooses, from accommodating them in the cabin to refusing to carry them altogether.
And to discuss this properly, we ought to open a Pit thread, I think. I was looking for information that might help me if I were to propose changes to my HOA’s rules or to look for a different place to live, and I think I’ve gotten what information there is to be had.
I would personally estimate that 75%, probably more, of the animals living in my community (which I should remind you ostensibly forbids pets) are companion animals that the pet-owner is permitted because of a psychological dependency that literally every human who wants a pet is entitled to get, thus making a mockery of the no-pets rule. I sense from the responses to my OP here that many respondents feel much more sympathy with these pet-owners than they do with me, which we really ought to discuss in the Pit rather than GD in my view.
I think that’s complete nonsense. The majority of responses here have (in addition to providing factual information) acknowledged that there’s a problem.
If you want to treat this as something where people either on “your side” or “against you”, then feel free to go to the Pit, although I’m not sure what you think that will achieve. This is a difficult problem where we should all acknowledge that there are various important & valid interests to consider, as well as abusers of the system.
It’s very rare that completeness in any field can be achieved, so thanks. I don’t consider your posts in this thread to have been hostile–on the contrary they’ve been enlightened and friendly.
I think some animal-lovers have tried to hijack this thread from my area of inquiry into a spirited defense of animals and the foolishness of banning them from areas where humans who choose not to live among pets live. The discussions of airlines, for example, is a bit of a hijack, but it’s also tangentially related so I voiced no objection to that one. But many responses have addressed a subject I hadn’t intended to discuss at all, that of whether people may be permitted to establish a pets-free community at all, which just seems silly me. If you and I buy a plot of land, fence it off, and sign an agreement to have no pets on that property in either of our houses, I can’t imagine what law we would be violating, but Ike Witt’s response, for one, takes great offense at the concept that you and I might choose to live where pets are banned.
I can see how if you change that into what you “paraphrased” you’ve probably found yourself surrounded by assholes your entire life.
Most in this thread have expressed that they don’t like how the laws are abused, and would like to see them changed or clarified in order to prevent exactly the problems that you are complaining about.
That’s nice, and I didn’t give any such opinions. You seem unusually determined to take offense.
I did however, give a suggestion that could be turned into legislation with enough pressure from people who don’t like the way the current system is abused, myself included.
My suggestion focuses on the dog, rather than the person. That way, there’s no concern over whether or not their disability is “legitimate” only that their dog is trained to be unobtrusive and well behaved. I assume you don’t mind if your neighbor has a dog, so long as it doesn’t bark or otherwise disturb you.
If there is something that you are asking that you can do yourself, then that is easy, the answer is no, short of taking @kayaker’s suggestion of moving out into the middle of nowhere.
So, you can either continue to complain about things you can’t change, or you can try to work with others to see if those things can be changed. Life’s a choice, I hope you haven’t already made yours.