Not all requests for disability accommodations are reasonable. How can you tell which are and which aren’t?
While the COVID-19 pandemic may have kept people at home in 2020, it apparently didn’t keep them from suing for discrimination. There were 28,712 total fair housing complaints in that pandemic year, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). That’s the third highest annual total since 2009, and only 168 complaints fewer than the second-place year of 2019. (Note: NFHA, a national civil rights organization that tracks fair housing litigation across the US, hadn’t published the 2021 statistics as of the date we went to press.)
Continuing historic patterns, disability discrimination was the most common ground of complaint, accounting for 15,664 (54.46%) of all 2020 cases. It’s a pretty good bet that failure to provide reasonable accommodations was at the center of most of these cases.
Bottom line: Statistically at least, if an applicant or resident ever sues you for a fair housing violation, it’ll most likely be for allegedly violating your obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for a disability.