Fair Housing Act helps protect disabled occupants from discrimination

Say you have a disability and want your condominium association to allow you to park closer to your unit. Or your psychiatrist has advised you to get a dog as a companion, but your association's rules do not permit pets. Maybe you discover that your unit has bedbugs, but your health condition cannot tolerate the insecticide that your cooperative plans to use to fumigate the building.

What can you do? What are your rights?

The magic words are "reasonable accommodation."

The Fair Housing Act, as amended by Congress in 1988, prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status -- and disability. Community associations are covered under the law.

If you have a disability -- physical or mental -- your association (or your landlord, if you are a tenant) cannot "refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services, if necessary for the disabled person to use the housing."

How do you prove disability? According to a recent case handed down by the D.C.Court of Appeals, you must show a disability and that the landlord (or community association) knew or should have known of the disability. You also must show that an accommodation is necessary for the use and enjoyment of the apartment, that the accommodation is reasonable and that the landlord (or association) refused the accommodation.

Rutland Court Owners is a cooperative in the Dupont Circle area. In August 2007, the co-op board was advised that there were bedbugs in the property. The board promptly arranged for an extermination company to inspect each unit and to make the appropriate treatment.

William Taylor has been a co-op owner since 1972. He suffers from several mental-health disorders for which he takes medication; he is assisted by a case worker and a psychiatrist.

According to the court, "Taylor raised various concerns about the exterminator selection and about the chemicals that would be used in the extermination process."

The co-op board did allow owners to provide alternative treatment plans, if they were deemed effective by the board. And although Taylor advised the board that he had started on an alternative plan, based on studies from Johns Hopkins, he did not submit a formal plan to the board.

Ultimately, the cooperative revoked Taylor's shares in the cooperative, and when Taylor did not move out of the building, the board filed a lawsuit for possession.

At trial, Taylor was required by the court to allow the extermination to proceed. He requested additional cleaning services to help prepare his unit for extermination. The trial court ruled that this constituted a "reasonable accommodation." Not only did the board ignore that request, it proceeded within three months to fine him and, two weeks later, to propose to revoke his shares.