Competing accommodation requests

The situation

One resident has a documented assistance animal. Another has a severe allergy or a phobia that is itself a disability. Both are people with disabilities living in your building, and you owe both a reasonable accommodation. Picking one and closing the file is the thing that generates a complaint.

What the duty requires

• Take both seriously, and ask for documentation of both where the disability is not obvious.
• Look for an arrangement that works for both before concluding that none exists.
• Document what you considered and why it would or would not work. That record is the whole of your defence.
• Do not disclose either resident disability to the other. You can say an animal is permitted, and that is all.

Arrangements that actually work

• Physical separation: different floors, different wings, different entrances where the building allows.
• Relocation of one party, offered rather than imposed, and at your cost if you are asking somebody to move.
• Air filtration in the affected unit, and HVAC separation where the system is shared.
• Scheduling in shared spaces such as a laundry room or a lift, which resolves more phobia cases than people expect.
• Enhanced cleaning of common areas, which is cheap next to a complaint.

Ordinary discomfort is not a competing claim

A resident who dislikes dogs, or finds an animal unsettling, has a preference rather than a disability. That does not outweigh another resident statutory right, and treating it as though it did is a refusal dressed as a balancing exercise.

If genuinely nothing works

In a small building with a shared entrance and a severe, documented allergy, the honest answer may be that no arrangement accommodates both. Get there by exploring rather than by assuming, write down what you tried, and take advice before refusing either resident.