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Like other real estate businesses, you may be using ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, and other generative AI products, a.k.a. chatbots, for marketing purposes, such as developing advertising strategies, analyzing housing markets, and generating property listings, ads, social media posts, and other marketing content. Just recognize that for all their potential benefits, chatbots contain flaws that make them risky to use for marketing and advertising.

This week, the Coach shepherds in the dog days of summer with a lesson on disability-related requests for assistance animals focusing on the most common type—dogs. The law generally allows communities to set their own pet policies, but housing providers must grant reasonable accommodation requests to allow individuals with disabilities to keep assistance animals when necessary to allow them full use and enjoyment of their homes.

Assistance animals can go by many names—service dogs, therapy animals, emotional support animals—and there are different sets of rules on when, where, and what types of animals may be used by individuals with disabilities in various settings. For this lesson, we’ll focus on federal fair housing law—the primary law governing use of assistance animals in multifamily housing communities, and we’ll use the umbrella term—assistance animals—to cover all types of animals that provide assistance to individuals with disabilities.

In this lesson, the Coach explains who qualifies as an individual with a disability and when you must consider making exceptions to your pet policies as a reasonable accommodation so they may keep an assistance animal at the community. Then we’ll suggest eight rules to help you avoid the missteps that often lead to fair housing trouble. 

Question:  We require that the application for residency in our manufactured housing community be completely filled out - including Social Security numbers.  We require two pieces of identification - one may be a social security card.  However, my understanding is that you cannot use a social security card for identification.  Is that true? 

We have had some real estate brokers object and tell us that it is against law do deny a person occupancy because they do not have a social security number.  Some applicants have an ITIN (individual taxpayer identification number).  

The screening company has said they cannot do a credit check with ITIN - they need a social security number.  

So, my questions are: (a) Is it illegal to requirea social security number; and (b) would it be a violation of the Fair Housing Laws to deny an applicant because they do not have a social security number?

To kick off the New Year, MHCO reviews recent developments—court rulings, settlements, and enforcement actions—in fair housing law. Staying on top of current developments may help you to avoid common problems that so often lead to fair housing trouble.