Do you feel you are being treated unfairly in your living situation? Are you happy in your living situation?
Federal, State, and Local Fair Housing and Anti-discrimination laws protect individuals from housing discrimination. It is unlawful to discriminate based on certain protected characteristics, including (but not limited to) disability.
Reasonable Accommodations/Reasonable Modifications
A reasonable accommodation is a change in rules, policies, practices, or services that enables a person with a disability an equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling. A person with a disability must notify the housing provider if they need a reasonable accommodation and the housing provider must grant the request if it is reasonable. There must be a connection between the disability and the need for the accommodation. Typically, accommodations will be a matter of negotiating what will serve both the housing provider and the disabled person best.
Examples of reasonable accommodations include:
- Assigning a person with a disability a reserved parking spot near their unit even though tenant parking is generally on a first-come, first served basis.
- Allowing a person with a disability to keep an assistance animal despite a “no pets” policy.
- Allowing a disabled tenant who receives disability checks on the 5th of every month to pay rent after the 1st of the month without a late fee.
A reasonable modification is a change in the physical structure of a dwelling that enables a person with a disability an equal opportunity to use and enjoy that dwelling. In many cases, individualized modifications to a dwelling enable a person with a disability to live in a space that they would otherwise be physically unable to live in. This includes the interior and exterior of a building or a unit, including public and common-use areas.
Examples of reasonable modifications include:
- Allowing a tenant who uses a wheelchair to install a ramp access to the entrance of the dwelling.
- Allowing a tenant to install grab bars in the bathroom.
- Allowing a tenant to install visual or tactile (touch) alert devices.
Housing Navigation
Housing Navigation is a focused, outcome oriented, and time limited service that helps people with IDD who need or want to move to community-based housing to obtain and maintain stable, long-term housing of their choice.
Housing Navigation services may include:
- Developing an individualized person-centered housing plan.
- Developing an individual housing budget including the optimization of benefits and financial consulting, if necessary.
- Implementing a housing action plan which includes the person’s housing vision and housing budget.
- Finding a home in the community of choice.
- Coordinating a move.
- Housing sustainability plan and transition to ongoing service providers.
- Housing crisis resolution.
Search for Housing Navigators in your area and find other great resources on the New York Housing Resource Center for People with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities website by clicking here.