Pet Policy
The Lawrence Housing Authority’s policy for assessing a person’s request to have an animal as a Reasonable Accommodation is developed in accordance with the Federal Fair Housing Act (FHA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
This policy provides guidelines in how to differentiate a service animal from an assistance animal. It also offers a set of best practices for complying with the FHA when assessing requests for reasonable accommodations to keep these animals in housing. Additionally, the policy provides clarification as to what type of information individuals with disabilities may need to give LHA to support their request under the FHA.
Service and assistance animals are not pets.
Download the following documents to learn more about our pet policy for reasonable accommodations and the elderly.
Service & Assistance Animals
What is a Service Animal?
Under the ADA, service animal means any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. Other species of animals, whether wild or domestic, trained or untrained, are not service animals for the purposes of this definition. The work or tasks performed by a service animal must be directly related to the individual’s disability.
What is an Assistance Animal?
Under the FHA and Section 504, an assistance animal is an animal that works, provides assistance, or performs tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or provides emotional support that alleviates one or more identified symptoms or effects of a person’s disability. Assistance animals perform many disability-related functions, including but not limited to, guiding individuals who are blind or have low vision, alerting individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to sounds, providing protection or rescue assistance, pulling a wheelchair, fetching items, alerting persons to impending seizures, or providing emotional support to persons with disabilities who have a disability-related need for such support.
The LHA has the authority to prohibit the keeping of service and assistance animals for the following reasons including but not limited to:
- The animal is out of control and the handler does not take effective action to control it; or
- The animal is not housebroken; or
- The animal poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others.
