Nearly everyone, at one time or another, rents an apartment. Yet, despite this universal experience, the general population is unknowledgeable about the laws regarding landlord/tenant relations.

This lack of information can be particularly troublesome for people with disabilities and those who rent to them.

At the recent Options for Independence annual conference, Merrillee Witherell, executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Central New York, presented a workshop that demystified housing laws for attendees.

When you are devoted to a cause, it can even haunt your sleep. Witherell began her presentation by telling everyone that she had not slept much the night before, but that she had a very vivid “fair housing-related dream” before she came to the conference.

In the dream, her brother had created posters saying that he needed to rent a house, and featured his baby's picture. She got very angry with her brother in the dream and scolded him because landlords can't base their decision to rent or not rent on family status.

While everyone at the workshop got a good laugh about the dream, the underlying issue of housing discrimination is very serious. Witherell was very clear that disability status was just as protected from discrimination in housing as race.

Beyond simply being protected from discrimination, people with disabilities have rights under federal and state law that fall generally into two categories: reasonable accommodation and reasonable modification.

Reasonable accommodations in this sense refer to changes in landlord policy to make the housing unit livable to a person with a disability. One of the most common examples of this is a “no pets” policy. A landlord is required by law to make a “reasonable accommodation” to a person with a disability and allow for an official “companion animal” or “service animal.”

Landlords are not allowed to charge extra for this reasonable accommodation.

Reasonable modifications, on the other hand, refers to structural changes that a person with a disability has a right to ask for. Legally, if the housing unit is privately owned, the renter has a right to accessibility modifications, but they also have the burden to pay to install them and to undo them when they leave. If a housing unit is publicly owned, the cost of modification is the burden of the organization that owns the unit.

When a person with disabilities is working with a landlord to get any of these rights observed, they do not sacrifice all of their privacy. Landlords have a right to ask for something in righting from a doctor saying that a person has a need for an accommodation or modification, but they do not have the right to your diagnosis.

The landlord is also barred from revealing your disability status to anyone.

Perhaps the most important thing attendees learned was that there are resources out there that will advocate for them in cases of housing discrimination. Being a person with a disability should never be a barrier to having a place to live.

For more information, contact the Fair Housing Council at 471-0420, e-mail fhccny1@aol.com or visit cnyfairhousing.org.

Collin M. Sullivan is an ADA/access advocate for Options for Independence