Reasonable Accommodation Requests: How to Respond, Document & Stay Compliant

A resident asks for an accommodation. What happens next?

For housing professionals, reasonable accommodation requests can raise important questions: What qualifies as a request? What information can you ask for? When is supporting documentation appropriate? How should the request be evaluated and documented? And how can your team respond consistently while meeting Fair Housing requirements?

In this practical 60-minute webinar, Doug Chasick will break down the reasonable accommodation process and provide housing professionals with clear, practical guidance they can apply to everyday situations.

You’ll learn how to recognize accommodation requests, communicate effectively with residents, evaluate requests appropriately, and create documentation that supports a consistent process.

Areas Covered

• The Legal Landscape in Plain English: What the Fair Housing Act, and Section 504 actually require of your community, and where each one applies.
• The Five-Part Test: A repeatable framework (disability, necessity, nexus, verification, alternative) staff can use to evaluate any request the same way, every time.
• Accommodations vs. Modifications: Why the law treats a policy exception and a structural change differently, and what that means for cost, timing, and paperwork.
• What You Can and Can't Ask: Navigating verification requests without triggering a disability-related inquiry violation, including how to handle obvious vs. non-obvious disabilities.
• The Interactive Process & Undue Burden: What to do when a request isn't reasonable as asked, and how to document a good-faith alternative

What You’ll Learn

• Distinguish a reasonable accommodation from a reasonable modification under the Fair Housing Act. Who pays for each and when a request for one becomes a request for the other.
• Apply a consistent framework of disability, necessity, nexus, verification, and alternatives to evaluate any accommodation or modification request that comes across their desk.
• Determine when it's lawful to ask for supporting documentation, what that documentation must (and must not) contain, and when a question crosses the line into a prohibited disability-related inquiry.
• Respond correctly to assistance animal and service animal requests, including how to handle "unique" animals, multiple-animal requests, and documentation purchased from internet certificate mills.
• Evaluate "undue burden" claims using HUD's case-by-case factors, so decisions to deny or modify a request are defensible rather than reflexive.
• Engage in the interactive process when the answer isn't an automatic yes by  proposing, discussing, and documenting alternatives that meet the resident's disability-related need.
• Build a documentation trail from intake through determination that would hold up if a denied request became a fair housing complaint or HUD charge.

Who Should Attend?

Whether you manage residents, supervise onsite teams, or oversee housing compliance, this webinar will help you approach reasonable accommodation requests with greater clarity, consistency, and confidence.

Speaker(s)

Doug Chasick

Doug Chasick, CPM®, CAPS, Adv. RAM, SLE, That Fair Housing Guy™, is the former President of the Fair Housing Institute, Inc. With more than 46 years of investment real estate experience, he began as the Resident Manager of a 524-unit apartment property and has been the President or CEO of five real estate companies, responsible for portfolios of over 28,000 apartments. Doug was awarded his CPM® in 1979 and was a member of the IREM National Faculty for eight years. A Senior Instructor member of the NAAEI Faculty, he leads the Advanced Facilitator Training course, is the co-author of “Outstanding Facilitation Techniques”, and a co-author of the joint IREM & NAAEI “Fair Housing and Beyond” course. He is a licensed Real Estate Broker in Florida, a licensed Expert Fair Housing Instructor in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the recipient of the NAAEI Apartment Career & Education award.

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