Service Animals - Info For Park City Property Management
In a previous blog post entitled Pet Friendly Rentals - Park City Property Management, I touched briefly on the idea of service animals. If you would like to read that blog post you may click here. For today's post I would like to dive a little further into the concept of service animals and how it applies to property management Utah.
Service Animals
Recent changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2011 have more narrowly defined, under law, what is considered a service animal. To be clear the changes only apply to the ADA and not to the Fair Housing Act. And as always, when dealing with complex legal matters, it is best to consult an attorney familiar with Utah property management law. The revisions to the ADA laws now classify only dogs as service animals. We are all familiar with the idea of a guide dog helping
blind people or providing some other type of assistance to someone with a visibly disability. However service animals are not limited to just physical disabilities. ADA laws provide for service animals to be used for people who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other mental disabilities. Landlords must be careful when approaching the issue of a service animal as there are things you may and may not ask of a person who identifies as having a service animal. When a person's disability is not immediately obvious a landlord may ask to see the dog's service animal registration or some type of document proving the need for a service animal. A landlord may also ask the nature of the service the dog provides but must never ask about the nature of a person's disability. For more information on the ADA change and a little bit about miniature horses you can click here.
Assistance Animals
Another category of animals helping people are what is known as assistance animals. Assistance animals, sometimes also referred to as emotional support animals, are different from service animals in a few key ways. Assistance animals do not have to undergo any type of formal training on the completion of specific tasks. They are also not limited to dogs only. As the alternate name suggests assistance animals are designed to provide some type of emotional support to a person with a disability. Emotional support does not necessarily mean that the disability is limited to mental or emotional, it is not. Assistance animal is a somewhat evolving term that has a broader reach than specific service animals. An individual suffering from anxiety disorders or PTSD may have their symptoms mitigated by the calming and loving 
presence of an animal. Another difference between the two types of animals is access. While a service animal is allowed by ADA laws to go anywhere the public may go, for example a sporting event. The more broadly defined assistance animal however is not protected by ADA law and could be turned away in our sporting event example. Where assistance animals do enjoy protection under the law is in the Fair Housing Amendments Act. The act allows a person with a disability to ask for reasonable accommodations in their housing. Allowing an assistance animal in a community with a "no pets" policy is an example of a reasonable accommodation. There have even been instances in Park City property management where an HOA was sued by a disabled person for not making reasonable accommodations. Click here if you would like to read about this case.
Recommendations
The key thing to remember in the case of service or assistance animals is you should not discriminate. If a potential tenant wants to rent your property and they qualify in every way, you cannot turn them down because they have a service animal. You also cannot accept them but charge pet rent or pet deposits. The tenant is still responsible for any damage the animal may cause but you cannot charge a pet deposit up front. A good rule of thumb is to not consider the animal a pet but rather a prescribed treatment for a disability. You can read more about FHA here and reasonable accommodations under FHA here.
If you are interested in learning more about property management Park City Utah, download our free white page "5 Questions Every Landlord Should Ask Themselves".
