It's Still a Zoo Out There: Managing Counterfeit Cats and Canines: A refresher on managing the proliferation of phony assistive animals and internet credentials.

On January 28, 2020, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) released Notice FHEO-2020-01, sometimes referred to as the “Assistance Animals Notice.” The Notice includes two attachments. The first, “Assessing a Person’s Request to Have an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act,” recommends a set of best practices for complying with the Fair Housing Act (FHA) when assessing a person with a disability’s accommodation requests involving animals in housing.

Even after many years, lots of confusion still exists about what we, as industry professionals, can and can’t do and say – resulting in lots of complaints and legal actions. In addition, the proliferation of internet-based assistance animal credential sites often makes identifying and verifying authentic assistance animals a very messy process!

This webinar will review the requirements for compliance with the FHA requirements for evaluating requests for reasonable accommodations involving animals, including who is eligible, definitions of the important terms and phrases you’ll encounter, how to assess the request and the fine points of approving and denying requests.

Webinar Objectives

Learn the difference between assistive animals and pets
Learn what kind of accommodations we may need to approve.
Learn how to differentiate between a service animal and a support animal.
Learn what questions and inquiries may be made regarding the disability and the animal.
Learn what types of verification and documentation may be required by the manager/owner.
Learn what animals may and may not be allowed as service and/or support animals.

Webinar Highlights

New definitions
Types of accommodations
Managing and assessing the request
Assistive Animals
Disabilities
The Nexus
Documentation & Verification
Summary of Best Practices

Who Should Attend

On-site and multi-site Property Managers; Marketing and Leasing Directors and Training and Development Professionals.

Doug Chasick

Doug Chasick, CPM®, CAPS, Adv. RAM, SLE, That Fair Housing Guy™, is the former President of the Fair Housing Institute, Inc. With more than 46 years of investment real estate experience, he began as the Resident Manager of a 524-unit apartment property and has been the President or CEO of five real estate companies, responsible for portfolios of over 28,000 apartments. Doug was awarded his CPM® in 1979 and was a member of the IREM National Faculty for eight years. A Senior Instructor member of the NAAEI Faculty, he leads the Advanced Facilitator Training course, is the co-author of “Outstanding Facilitation Techniques”, and a co-author of the joint IREM & NAAEI “Fair Housing and Beyond” course. He is a licensed Real Estate Broker in Florida, a licensed Expert Fair Housing Instructor in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the recipient of the NAAEI Apartment Career & Education award.