public-service · reasonable accommodation housing
What 24 CFR 100.204 Says About Refusing a Reasonable Accommodation
The general reasonable-accommodation rule in 24 CFR 100.204 and its cited seeing-eye-dog and reserved-parking examples.
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Updated: Sources: 1
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What matters now
- Refusing a reasonable accommodation is unlawful when it may be necessary for equal use and enjoyment of a dwelling.
- No-pets example: without a seeing-eye dog, a blind tenant lacks equal opportunity to use the dwelling.
- Parking example: without a reserved space, tenant John might be unable to live there at all.
- The regulation's examples describe their accommodations as feasible and practical under the circumstances.
Under the federal regulation at 24 CFR 100.204, a housing provider commits an unlawful act if it refuses a reasonable accommodation in its rules, policies, practices, or services when that accommodation may be necessary to give a person with a disability an equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling unit or its common areas (24 CFR 100.204). The regulation’s own text illustrates this rule with two examples: a blind tenant’s need for a service animal despite a no-pets policy, and a tenant’s need for a reserved accessible parking space. This article stays inside what that regulatory text itself says about those two examples and leaves several related questions unsettled, covered at the end.
This original record-reading guide is a general reading aid, not cited evidence. It does not depict a source record; the article text and source links provide the facts.
Key points
- Refusing a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices, or services is unlawful when it may be necessary for a person with a disability to have equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling, including its common areas (24 CFR 100.204).
- In the regulation’s own seeing-eye dog example, without that accommodation a blind tenant would not have equal opportunity to use and enjoy the dwelling (24 CFR 100.204).
- In the regulation’s own parking example, without a reserved space the tenant, John, might be unable to live at the property at all (24 CFR 100.204).
- The regulation ties “reasonable” to feasibility: an accommodation qualifies when it is feasible and practical under the circumstances (24 CFR 100.204).
The core rule
The operative sentence of 24 CFR 100.204 states: “It shall be unlawful for any person to refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford a handicapped person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling unit, including public and common use areas” (24 CFR 100.204). Read plainly, this means a housing provider does not get to simply say no to a change in a rule, policy, practice, or service — such as a no-pets rule or a parking assignment scheme — when that change may be necessary for a person with a disability to have the same opportunity as anyone else to use and enjoy their unit or the building’s common areas. The “may be necessary” standard, in the regulation’s own wording, is the trigger for the unlawfulness finding.
The seeing-eye dog example
The regulation applies its general rule to a concrete scenario involving a no-pets policy and a blind tenant. Its own text explains the reasoning this way: “without the seeing eye dog, the blind person will not have an equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling” (24 CFR 100.204). In this example, the no-pets policy itself is not the problem — the problem is that applying it without exception to this particular tenant would deny that person the equal opportunity described in the text above. The regulation’s text frames the accommodation (waiving the no-pets policy for the seeing-eye dog) as necessary specifically because the dog is what allows the equal opportunity to exist in the first place.
The reserved parking space example
The regulation’s second illustration concerns a tenant identified as John and a request for a reserved accessible parking space. The text states: “without a reserved space, John might be unable to live in Progress Gardens at all” (24 CFR 100.204). Here again, the regulation’s own framing treats the accommodation as tied to the tenant’s basic ability to use and enjoy the dwelling — a condition the text describes as potentially making the difference between John being able to live at Progress Gardens and not being able to live there at all.
Defining “reasonable”
In its examples, the regulation describes an accommodation as reasonable because it is “feasible and practical under the circumstances” (24 CFR 100.204). This article reports that wording as it appears in the examples without treating it as a complete rule for every accommodation request.
What this regulation does not answer
This article reports the general rule and the two cited examples in 24 CFR 100.204. It does not determine whether a particular request is reasonable, necessary, or unlawful to refuse.