Immigration status and accommodation requests
Answers
Status is not part of the accommodation analysis, and it is not a question a provider gets to attach to one.
The Act protects persons
The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination against a person with a disability, and it is not written in terms of citizenship. The reasonable accommodation duty is owed to a person with a disability who lives in or is applying for the dwelling.
What a provider may ask
Whatever they ask every applicant as part of ordinary screening, applied consistently. What they may not do is attach an immigration question to an accommodation request specifically, or treat a request as an occasion to raise status. National origin is itself a protected characteristic, and singling somebody out that way is a problem quite apart from the disability question.
The documentation question
You need a clinician licensed in your state who has evaluated you. That has nothing to do with status, and community health centres and federally qualified health centres serve people regardless of it. A documentation route exists that does not require you to explain anything about your status to anybody.
Federally assisted housing programmes have their own eligibility rules, which are about the programme rather than about the accommodation duty. The two questions are separate and should be kept separate.
Common questions
- Will asking draw attention to me?
- A request establishes that a disability exists and that an animal is needed. It says nothing about status, and a provider raising status in response is doing something they should not.