Disability Deep Dive for Service Professionals

Complaints alleging discrimination based upon disability account for more than half of all reported fair housing complaints. The majority of complaints are due to ignorance of the law, resentment or people thinking they know better than HUD and DOJ. In particular, service professionals often find themselves confronted with situations, questions, and conversations about topics outside their area of expertise since they typically have the most contact with customers. Attempts at being helpful can easily result in misunderstandings, confusion, and even fair housing complaints.

At most communities, members of the service team do not have the responsibility of deciding what is reasonable, which requests should be approved and which denied or how to conduct an interactive process session. Still, it is important for all members of the service team to be trained in the basics of fair housing, as well as the “why” of what looks like special treatment and is actually a reasonable accommodation or modification and how to answer the questions most often asked by customers about other customers and their animals, parking spaces and other “special privileges.”

Additionally, all team members must be made aware of easy it is to inadvertently violate the privacy of a resident or give someone just enough information to “game the system” when it comes to turning a pet into an assistive animal or obtain a reserved parking space.