Once an applicant or customer has begun the process with our review team they will be asked questions and or asked for documentation. Our team knows which process they should follow depending on their animal. And our review team will ask only that which is permissible and in accordance with the fair housing act, the fair housing amendments act, and the most recent HUD guidance at this time — the FHEO 2020-01 notice. Please ask the applicant or customer to kindly continue to engage with our team and let us try our best to make everything clear. We will be utilizing HUD verbiage and we will be patient, firm and clear.

At the end of the day, if a customer informs you they refuse to process an assistance animal request through PetScreening please contact us. We can help the site team process the request outside of the PetScreening platform if necessary. Property management professionals are legally bound to consider all requests for reasonable accommodation and are entitled to reliable documentation for support animals. We'd like to be sure you avail yourselves of these rights along with accommodating someone who may have a disability-related challenge with the process.

If a customer doesn't have the necessary electronic equipment to process a profile, please assist them and allow them to utilize your community's business office or even a computer or iPad that you might have available in the community office itself.

All pets and animals are expected to follow the same rules. A dog can very often be a reasonable accommodation for the disabled. However, having one that deprives multiple neighbors of their rights to use and enjoy their homes in a reasonable and acceptable fashion is not a reasonable accommodation. Having said that, if you make a phone call or issue a violation letter to a pet owner for a barking and howling dog, you would do the same for an assistance animal. And, if you are a PetScreening customer, you'll also be able to enter the details associated with this challenge in the dog's profile within the PetScreening system under Issues.

Anyone making a request for an assistance animal from the point you are a PetScreening client should be directed to the community's landing page to initiate the PetScreening process. Through that process, an assistance animal requester will have the opportunity to make their request and to upload supporting documentation. They can also utilize the chat feature on our website to engage in a dialogue with our review team.

Customers who initially begin with an assistance animal request can click on the pencil icon by the profile type and change the status in that location to a pet profile.

Your role will be to explain to guests that once they become an applicant, they will receive an email from us that will include a link to a landing page. On that page, they will be able to select what type of household they are; one with no pets, one with pets, or one with one or more assistance animal requests. Then the process will continue from that point of selection between the requester and the assistance animal review team.

When onsite team members welcome a guest who asks about the processing of assistance animal accommodation requests, they can gracefully exit the conversation. It would sound something like, "I'm looking for a two-bedroom apartment for myself, my dog who is my pet, and another dog who is my support animal. I have this registration form, and I want to make sure both of my dogs are welcome here." That's when your teams can now say, "That's great! We have an assistance animal review team. They're fabulous, and they receive and process assistance animal requests for our applicants. For our time together today, we'll focus on your apartment choice and your pet. The assistance animal review team will address the assistance animal requests once you become our applicant."