Workshop Recap: Managing Reasonable Accommodations & Modifications
On Friday, June 18th, SCANPH convened for the first educational workshop in our new asset and property management series, Managing Reasonable Accommodations & Modifications: Clarifying Processes, Legalities, and Compliance. Given that disability claims are the number one Fair Housing complaint that results in large settlements, asset and property managers face no shortage of decisions when handling resident needs and complications pertaining to reasonable accommodations or modifications.
This session provided attendees with practical insights and tools to help housing providers understand the difference between accommodations versus modifications, ADA issues, important legalities, budget planning to cover accessibility, cost containment, and insights on the challenges that front-line staff face to best serve residents. This program was instructed by Angel Rogers, Chief Learning Officer at National CORE.
Rogers provided an insightful overview of both the Fair Housing Act as well as the Americans with Disability Act. This legislation allows for rulemaking around housing policy while granting reasonable accommodations for disabled residents. Since 1988, all units must be made available to persons with disabilities to make housing available and enjoyable to all. In California, differences exist between federal and state policy. The Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal Fair Housing Act and the Unruh Civil Rights Act all work in compliance to ensure that persons with disabilities are treated fairly.
Later in the session Rogers pointed out the importance of establishing the need for accommodation or modification. It is wise to outline written procedures for handling modification and accommodation requests to assure that you provide equal opportunities for all who make requests. Further, it is essential to understand the parameters of what counts as credible verification when determining certification of disability. When dealing with written or verbal requests, or when residents seek a modification or accommodation, you may ask to have the resident make the request in writing. Courts will uphold a verbal request but written requests are optimal.
To conclude the session, Rogers pointed out that service providers should never inquire or make any assumptions about the nature or severity of a person’s disability. Service staff should not contact health care providers to ask questions or obtain additional information about a person’s disability. As service staff, it is your job to determine if a request is reasonable. While modification requests are less common than accommodations, understanding the key differences between service animals, emotional support animals and therapy animals will help your staff best manage resident’s assistance animals.