For instance, I know a woman who has a rabbit that is a certified companion animal. And she lives in an apartment that doesn’t allow pets, but she has the rabbit with the landlord’s permission, based on a letter from her therapist. (A real letter from a real therapist.) She would like to get a second rabbit, mostly because rabbits are social animals, and it would be better for her rabbit if she had another. But she’s checked, and the landlord won’t let her. And she doesn’t want to risk breaking the lease and losing her home.
Note that her rabbit is silent and stays inside her apartment. Odds are her neighbors don’t even know she has it. It’s also spayed, so there’s no chance of her breeding them or anything if she got a second one.
Even if this is true with respect to the presence of pets, the problem here is presumably persistent barking. Responsible dog owners are no more favorably disposed than you are toward irresponsible dog owners. What makes you think someone with a well behaved and well loved dog is not equally annoyed by the noise from a nearby dog that is (for example) irresponsibly left outside unattended for long periods and barks anxiously? Perhaps even more so, since an anxious persistently barking dog tends to make other dogs excited or anxious.
But you just seem to be adopting a passive aggressive defeatist attitude that presumes that the world is full of unreasonable assholes who are all ganging up to try to make your life a misery. That way lies madness.
Just to say - the first approach should be framed much more amicably than a complaint. The only time I’ve had an issue in my neighborhood, the elderly dog owner was simply unaware that her little doggo was screaming with an astonishing noise like a human toddler being tortured when she went out and left it in her courtyard! She was genuinely upset to discover her dog was getting so stressed, she just didn’t know it was happening. This was the first time I interacted with her because she’s not an immediate neighbor - she’s now a friend. I honestly don’t have a lot of time for small yappy dogs, but if I’d approached with an antagonistic attitude, the outcome might have been very different. As it was - one friendly conversation led immediately to two happier human beings and a happier dog.
Obviously the system, as designed, was intended to permit certified service animals and to forbid all others, but someone found a loophole long ago that permitted animals that met a “psychological need” and not an actual disability. Further, it was deemed acceptable to submit as proof of this psychological need a letter from someone who claims to be a psychologist (but might not be, or might be an unethical scammer like my ex-girlfriend, who gives letters out like Skittles at $200 a pop). Still further, some communities (my former high-rise in NYC, for example) felt they had to grandfather in pre-existing pets since they didn’t feel it was right to make people move out or get rid of the pets they already had before the no-pets rule was instituted. And naturally some people have new pets (the rules there were instituted several dog-lifetimes ago) that they claim are the original (30-year-old) dogs they had grandfathered in in 1991.
The OP here is not seeking personal advice. Please open up your own thread (in MPSIMS, perhaps?) if you feel compelled to offer unsolicited personal advice as to where I should live or how I should deal with the issue I gave purely as an illustration of the OP, which is “How might “service animals” legally and morally be limited to actual service animals performing a service?” If your answer is, “It can’t,” then that suffices, thanks. My reading of the helpful advice offered in this thread is that I need to go through several complicated and onerous steps of dealing with my personal problem that will, at best, take years to have any effect and most likely in the end will not actually have any effect.
Um, my answer is “it can, I know communities where it is, and it may already be the case in your community, but like every other rule, it sometimes takes a little effort to enforce it.”
Modnote: This is pretty much Jr. Modding. This is not allowed. Do not do this again. We give some leeway to the OPs of threads, but you do not own or control them. Sorry.
In fact, I hardly see a debate here, I’m moving it to IMHO as you’re clearly seeking advice despite such protests as above.
QFT. I have a young and rather excitable, barky dog. He is tremendously egged on by a dog two doors down who is not only super reactive but who spends most of his days out in the front yard, barking at EVERYTHING. UPS trucks, passing walkers, bicycles, blowing leaves, Walnut is On The Job. Which then transfers to my dog and makes him even barkier. Now, nobody has complained, my next door neighbors love my dogs and their dog gets a substantial portion of his daily exercise running up and down our mutual fence with my dogs, nobody has a problem with Sir Barksalot. Except ME, I have a big problem with it and don’t WANT a dog who barks at everything. This is why he has a bark collar and why I interrupt him when he gets too excitable to bring him inside to chill out–because I want my dogs to be properly socialized and not a nuisance. So no, it does NOT always follow that someone who is bothered by a nuisancy dog will be burdened with years of litigation to fix the issue. If the OP chooses to believe this, that’s completely on them.
And the fact that your “no pets” rules are being infringed indicates that pets are preferred by the majority, or at least that the no-pet people are not making themselves heard. Which will lead eventually to a rescinding of the “no pets” rules, more than likely. If the OP does not want this to happen then the OP needs to step up and advocate for themself. Or just enjoy the view from up on the cross, I hear it’s very nice.
Historically, a problem was people trying to keep service animals out of places they were allowed. Personal experience, someone at a office supply store calling police because they thought a guide dog shouldn’t be allowed in. Police showed up and explained dog was allowed. My understanding is the law was written so extreme to prevent, uh, “harassment “ might be the right word? So maybe the law needs updated.
As far as what you can do about it. The IAADP is one group that does service animal advocacy, and would have info about the current state of affairs. I’d suggest this article for what’s going on right now - response to some sort of proposed law or standards. Should have useful links for further research.
I’m totally with the OP on this issue, however, as far as I’m aware, if you live in any “common” building you’re not going to be able to avoid people who have “livestock” in their home for one reason or another. I don’t know what someone like my sister in law would do if she were faced with a situation like that as she’s deathly allergic to animal hair and the rights of those that want animals around as far as I can tell trump her disability so I would presume if someone with an animal moves in, then she either lives with it or moves.
The threshold for wanting a “service animal” for comfort is extremely low. Before I retired, a coworker had her little dog in the office and we had to put up with it. Most fortunately, it was well behaved and for the most part stuck to her office.
So how does someone who is “deathly allergic to animal hair” even function in the world? She must never leave her home because surely every day she’d encounter someone who had animal hair on their clothes, right?
She seems fine unless she’s in an enclosed space and close to someone with animal hair on them she’ll get quite stuffed up but of course changes her “space” before her breathing issues get severe. She doesn’t even think about visiting in someone’s home that has animals in them.
The problem is that there is no system, and there is no such thing as a certified service animal. What there is is the ADA, which says that:
Note that there is no requirement that the allegedly disabled person answer these questions honestly. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from taking little Fifi into a restaurant, and if the manager asks you those questions, saying “yes, she alerts me if I’m about to have a seizure.” It is illegal for them to ask you to provide any evidence of this assertion, and as long as Fifi doesn’t bark, bitr, urinate on the floor, etc., there is absolutely nothing they can do.
I’m pretty sure people were suggesting that you talk to the dog owner and then, if that doesn’t work, talk to the HOA.
You are the one who has interpreted this to mean that it will require “several complicated and onerous steps” that will “take years to have any effect” and ultimately be futile.
Do you routinely take this attitude with the inconveniences in your life? If you bought something that you didn’t want, and somebody suggested you return it to the store, do you lament the “complicated and onerous” steps required to drive back there, speak to customer service, present a receipt, and exchange the item?
Everything can seem complicated, onerous and futile if you approach it with an angry, defeatist attitude. In this instance, you have literally no idea how you might be received if you mention your problem to your neighbors, yet you’ve already predetermined how this will play out.
Surrounded by assholes? There’s a profound lesson in that sentiment, but it’s probably not the one you are considering.
The community that controls your former high-rise in NYC didn’t “feel they had to grandfather in pets because they they didn’t feel it was right to make people move or get rid of their pets”.
They simply followed the law, they had absolutely no discretion in the matter. New York City has some incredibly tenant-friendly laws, and this is one of them. If it was legal for the tenant to own a pet when they moved in, they get to keep the pet. And in certain cases, like if the tenant is a senior citizen, they are allowed to replace that pet when it dies.
If you don’t like the way your board is enforcing the rules and they aren’t responsive to your complaints, there is no easy answer. If the problem is “the no pets rule is being laxly enforced because the board is granting too many exceptions”, you can try to sue but you will almost certainly lose. HOA’s and tenant boards have broad discretionary powers under something called the “business judgement” rule, and if you sue them just because you don’t like or agree with their decisions, you will not prevail -even if the decision burdened or damaged you. You would have to prove corruption or actual malice, and that’s a hard lift.
Now, if you can get a group of like-minded homeowners, you don’t need a majority of all owners. If you want to install enough board members to flip the rule and you have the volunteers, you just need a majority of the quorum at the meeting.
Even if the annual meeting doesn’t achieve a quorum* or you don’t have enough people to flip control of the board, if you show up with a bunch of people with the same complaints, there’s a good chance your board will listen to you.
A quorum is a certain percentage of owners or shareholders or their representatives. The percentage is determined by the governing documents, in my experience its usually between 40-60%. You need a quorum for an election, otherwise the annual meeting becomes an informational discussion. Some bylaws have elaborate procedures for reducing the number of members needed for a quorum, allowing elections to be conducted with only a small percentage of the membership participating, others don’t.
To further complicate matters, it isn’t always one person one vote, in a coop apartment building the number of votes each owner has is determined by the size and placement of their unit.
The rules around coop and HOA boards can be incredibly complex, but if you are looking to effect change you need to understand them. If seen organized groups try to flip control of a residential board when they had enough support to do so….then they blew it up because they didn’t fully understand how the voting worked. (in the case I’m thinking of, they put forth too many candidates, they thought it showed strength, but they just ended up diluting their own votes.)