Landlords Gave Girl With Cerebral Palsy Two Options: Bad and Worse

For a divorced Iowa mother caring for a daughter with cerebral palsy, there were two options: 1) pay an additional $200 security deposit, plus $25 extra in rent each month, or 2) give up your apartment.

Why the options after the family had already been living in their apartment for months? The mother thought a Labrador retriever would provide needed assistance and stress reduction to the seven-year-old girl. Her pediatrician agreed and wrote a letter to the family's landlords to support their request for a reasonable accommodation to the landlords' no-pets rule.

However, the landlords refused to accommodate the girl's disability in this way, prompting the family to move out of the building to an apartment with a higher rent, located much farther away from the girl's school.

The mother complained to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which brought a fair housing complaint against the landlords and issued a Charge of Discrimination. A HUD administrative law judge is expected to hear the case.