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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

> I was rather surprised about 12 years ago when we were looking to move in together, and someone told us, "oh, you can get around this building's no dogs policy with a doctor's note." That really bothered us.

That's a federal rule around emotional support dogs I think?

Honestly I think landlords should just be banned for having those kinds of rules against common pets like some saner countries, so I don't have a problem with people getting around it. Landlords in the US have too much power over tenants.

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In the US it's the Fair Housing Act. Basically if the dog is providing necessary emotional support then the landlord can't prevent them from being with you in your home (I think there might be a carve out for nuisance dogs, but the dog doesn't need to be specifically trained for anything in particular to qualify).

It's a really low bar for a dog to qualify as an Emotional Support Animal. Which is great for people who need it, but is SO easy to abuse.

It only gives permission for someone to live with their dog though. It doesn't give someone any rights to bring their dog to restaurants and stuff though, even though people try. That's reserved for Service Animals.

Service dog is also SO easy to abuse.

What service does your service dog perform?

It alerts me to seizures or tells me when to take my diabetes medicine.

Your dog still needs to be under control though. The ADA is somewhat vague on what that means but it is a behavior standard and if someone's dog is misbehaving you can kick out the dog (the human needs to be allowed to return without the animal).

This is not in fact a federal rule. https://www.ada.gov/resources/service-animals-2010-requireme...

It actually is, it's just not from the ADA: https://www.dva.wa.gov/counseling/service-and-companion-anim...

> The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is a federal agency that administers the Fair Housing Act (FHA). Under the FHA, a service animal is defined as an animal that is a necessary reasonable accommodation for a person with a disability. Emotional support animals and comfort animals ARE included in the HUD definition and are therefore allowed into a person's dwelling.

> There should be no "pet fee" for the service animal. The person with the disability must request the animal as a reasonable accommodation for the disability, and must be able to show that the animal is necessary because of the person's disability.

Basically it's using a more expansive definition of "service animal" than is typical, such that just about anyone could probably get their pets to qualify if they want.

The key word is "disability". I am not disabled. My wife is not disabled. The person who told us to get a doctor's note was not disabled.

I'm all for bending an inconvenient rule from time to time, but claiming a dog is an emotional support animal without having a disability is too far across the line, IMO.

The issue is that, as I understand it, it's a rather broad definition of disability too, including stuff like being depressed.

Some of us want to live in no-dog buildings and we should have that option.

In practice it just becomes landlords suppressing what people can do in their homes to make things easier for themselves. Landlords would also happily ban parties or children if they could somehow get away with it. That some people would be happy with a no-child or no-party building wouldn't make that okay either.

That said, if it was a matter of a small number of buildings being allowed to designate themselves as no-pet/no-dog, I'd probably be okay with that. Things like this only tend to become a problem if you let anyone do it.

Is there any regulation that stops landlords from prohibiting parties? The internet suggests that this does ever appear in leases, and to the extent that it's not common it's likely just because it's hard to enforce.

Kind of. Here in California (can't speak to the rest of the country), you have a "right to quiet enjoyment" of your rental property, which has been specified to specifically allow guests within "reasonable" limits. I can't find any case law specifically around day guests (most of the discussion surrounds how long a multi-night guest can stay), but prohibiting guests outright is definitely illegal.

All in all, it's safe to say a moderate sized get-together, that doesn't violate the fire code occupancy limits nor make excess noise for the time of day, would be very difficult for a landlord to evict you over.

They are called single family homes.

Which are insanely expensive in certain areas of California. IE, you can only own them if you are an exec or win the startup lottery.

Then get used to the fact that other people in your building may have other lifestyles. The double standard is incredible. You can’t live in a single family home because it’s not affordable, yet you want pet owners to not be in apartments, implying they need to live in single family homes to be able to keep a pet.

But I have plenty of options for buildings that don't allow dogs.

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