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hello everybody um welcome um on behalf of all of us at connecticut coalition to end homelessness to the 18th annual training institute and conference we're thrilled to have you here today for our first panel this panel discussion can they do that understanding and protecting tenant rights in connecticut so excited for a really lively and wonderful discussion we have some great presenters today um this is a really fabulous conference you uh if you've registered which you all have then you've seen that we have an incredible array of different opportunities to explore homelessness through the lens of economic justice racial justice and criminal justice to look at at the impact of covet on homelessness and to explore a lot of different issues relevant to our field so thank you all for coming and please do keep spreading the word to people um to sign up it's not too late um and it's free and you know we're really glad to have as many people as are interested in learning about homelessness and what they can do about it i wanted to give a quick shout out to our sponsors bank of america and zillow who are presenting sponsors for this year's event we're absolutely thrilled and want to encourage all of you to in addition to focusing on signing up for all the different sessions to make sure you carve out time for today's housing as a right discussion featuring leilani farha of the shift representative johanna hayes and senator saud anwar from the connecticut state legislature legislature so very exciting and please join us and spread the word and now i'd like to turn it over to finn darby hudgins who will introduce our speakers we're thrilled to have finn here amy eppler epstein jessica labrances and michelle duma dumas coyler here today so um thanks so much to everybody for joining us thanks for our speakers and over to you finn good morning everybody we're really really excited to be here and i just want to do a quick housekeeping thing as we get started so if you see the panelists on the right side of your computer screen you will see that one of our panelists is named cosign interpreter if you are in need of um interpretive asl services please pin that video um to just you select pin video and so what you do is on the right hand corner of the video screen there is a small blue box with three dots in it please click that box um and an option to pin the video will come down and that will keep our interpreter services available to you um throughout the the panel so without further ado i want to get started right away today's presentation is simply can they do that and it's going to be a conversation about tenants legal rights in connecticut where we consult three housing attorneys um who work in connecticut today just quickly before we get started i want to encourage everybody to follow the organization's representative today on their social media handles and feel free to tweet at the conference using the hashtag ati 2020. again just a little bit of housekeeping we hope that today's conference when brings or we hope that this workshop remains very interactive for participants um and so even though you are on mute um we do have several different ways uh that we are able to respond to your questions and have you interact with the panel participants so the first one is you can put questions into the chat window or the q a window and i will be monitoring those throughout the conference presentation the second thing that you can do is you can tweet at us and we will get back to those questions as soon as we are able able to so without further ado let me introduce to you my colleagues and today's panel um our first panelist is michelle james kuhlman she is a human rights attorney with the commission on human rights and opportunities here in connecticut our second panelist is amy eppler ebstein and she's a staff attorney with new haven legal assistance association and our third panelist is jessica labrences and she's my colleague at the connecticut fair housing center so here is a quick rundown of how today's workshop is going to work this workshop is true is the goal is to remain very interactive so we are really encouraging our participants to get involved which is really really exciting we have several different polls um that are available throughout the conference and we're real or throughout the workshop and we're really really encouraging our participants to answer those polls as quickly as possible and we hope to respond to them today we are going to address barriers to housing opportunities and common barriers that we suspect most of the audience has seen for their tenants we are going to address typical ways that we see housing discrimination affect tenants opportunity for housing choice and then we're going to do a very quick round at the end where we address common tenant concerns if time permits we will do a short q a if for however your question is not answered during this workshop please don't hesitate to reach out to anybody um who is presenting or to myself we are really more than happy so our first audience poll today is going to be do you know how each of the organizations can serve you and your clients i'm going to launch this poll and this is a very simple question yes or no answer so great i love that we have so many participants on our poll so it looks like the overwhelming majority are either unsure of how these organizations help tenants in connecticut or they really just do not know so to move this right along as you can see the majority of our attendees are either unsure or they simply are really unfamiliar with our organization so to move that right along jessica are you able to take a moment to explain how the connecticut fair housing center serves tenants in connecticut good morning everyone i'm jessica laprensis i'm an attorney with the connecticut fair housing center we're a non-profit law firm dedicated to combating housing discrimination we're based in hartford but we operate statewide and we provide legal advice and advocacy including administrative representation in administrative cases and court actions and then the other side of our office defends homeowners in foreclosures and brings cases against banks related to mortgages and fair lending discrimination great thank you so much jessica i'm going to turn it over to michelle dennis fueler with the commission on human rights and opportunities michelle can you explain how your organization serves the state sure good morning everybody so the commission on human rights and opportunities is the oldest state-based civil rights organization in the country and we are the state enforcement agency for the civil rights statutes in connecticut that's in employment housing public accommodation which people sometimes wonder what that means that means if you go to a doctor or grocery store the police department your school those are all public accommodation where you should not be discriminated against and credit transactions our services are provided statewide we have four regional offices and a main office for our housing unit in hartford um our services are free we're administrative agency and we're um we're designed to uh be very easy to navigate we also monitor the contract compliance all the money that the state spends on construction we make sure that a portion of it goes to minority-owned businesses women-owned um race color disability and then finally we monitor the hiring of the state of connecticut executive branch agencies to make sure that they're representative of the um available workforce for the positions that are being sought so that's what the commission does thank you michelle amy if you could take a minute to explain how new haven legal assistance association represents tenants in connecticut good morning my name is amy i'm an attorney at new haven legal assistance and we are um we provide free legal services on a variety of civil issues so not criminal defense for the most part but a wide range of civil issues from family law child protection education housing immigration public benefits disability rights workers rights all sorts of civil legal services we operate in new haven county and we are part of a statewide network of sister organizations that operates throughout the state so you can access free legal services for low-income people throughout any of the legal services there's a 1-800 number for applications at statewide legal services and then our sister agencies are greater hartford legal aid in hartford county and connecticut legal services that covers the rest of the state and my office has new haven legal assistance that covers all of new haven county great thank you so much amy so before we dive into today's presentation which is going to be um where we really explore different types of scenarios where tenants could potentially face barriers to housing opportunity our panelists and myself would like to know who is in the audience so our next poll today will um simply ask you which group that you most closely represent with however if none of these work for you please feel free to just simply answer i'm just waiting a few more seconds it's so nice to see that we have so many people participating in our polls great oh this is excellent i love the diversity that we have represented here so it looks like we really have every organization who could be a key stakeholder in addressing barriers to um housing opportunities uh just for our panelists to see we do have some housing providers some tenants represented a few attorneys and the majority of our audience seems to identify as social service providers this is excellent thank you so much all for sharing that with us today so we are going to dive right into our case scenarios and the audience is going to be given an opportunity to try to figure this out before an attorney does answers so our first case scenario addresses a common barrier that to housing that can be in the form of race and national origin discrimination the case study suggests a person who is homeless speaks spanish as their primary language and speaks limited english a caseworker is trying to help this person find housing they find an appropriate unit the landlord says this is an english speaking only property and i will need to see your papers to prove that you are all legal i'm going to ask the audience can they do that great i really am loving that so many of you are engaging in the polling it really helps to keep some of these zooms a little bit more interactive all right so only about three percent of the audience suggested that the landlord could say that to the prospective tenant 80 of you suggested that no they could not and 10 of you were unsure um michelle are you able to take a moment to dive into this case study absolutely um i am actually really excited that a lot of people knew that that something was wrong here because that is really half the battle in terms of the work that we all do is knowing that something is wrong um and coming to one of our agencies to to ask us about it because i think the thing that the commission and connecticut for housing and legal services we are all here to be a resource to you and so um so for those of you who knew that yay for those of you who didn't that's that happens all the time and i want to break this uh slide and just into two sections the first is the english speaking only property um that is not a requirement of tenancy you know a requirement of tenancy is is paying your rent and being you know respectful and a good tenant and um keeping your place clean all that kind of stuff i mean but speaking the language of the landlord is not and so while we see that um happening it usually is a is a mask for um race color national origin or ancestry discrimination and so those are all protected classes where you were born um whether it be in the united states or some other place would be your national origin where your family is from is your ancestry your race and color are your race and color and you cannot be discriminated against by a landlord if you do not speak the language that that he or she speaks um and so that means that the landlord needs to work with you in order to make sure that you're able to rent the unit and if they choose not to then that's going to be discrimination and that's something that you would need to hope please please call one of us about um the other question which is is really disturbing too is the the papers part of it um there is not a requirement that a person be a citizen of the united states in order to rent an apartment unit um again you are required to meet those minimum requirements to be a tenant and i think the thing i want everyone to know is that while we're a state agency the commission is a state agency we do not um we're not in the business of reporting uh people we're not uh as i've been an employee there for 15 years and we have not had a situation where um we have been asked so about immigration status or the cases that we're processing um there's obviously complications to uh filing a complaint in that um you are um exposing yourself potentially but i want everyone to know that we are not uh reporting it and we i've never known of any inquiries about it so we're a safe place to come in order to file a complaint and i can't stress enough if you don't know please call one of our organizations we're here to help you and our services are free to do that and it's important that you don't navigate it on your own jessica or amy would you like to add anything to michelle's um breakdown of this case study i think i would just add kind of an example of why this type of inquiry is discrimination based on race or national origin and i think intuitively we know that if a landlord was faced with faced with a potential tenant who came from say sweden or somewhere in europe they probably wouldn't ask that person um can i see your papers to prove that you're legal and i think that's something that is um definitely used as a weapon against people from spanish-speaking countries in a way that it wouldn't be for um for somewhere in europe somewhere like sweden somewhere where people tend to be whiter and so that's why we say this is this indicates race or national origin discrimination thank you so much jessica amy any final thoughts i think i've covered it but i'm glad michelle stressed that people should um feel free and comfortable to come forward to state agencies and to legal services that there's we don't do any reporting and we're not in the business of of reporting people's status publicly so great thank you so much and audience if you have any additional questions related to this type of discrimination or barriers that are caused by recent national origin discrimination into housing please don't hesitate to put those questions into our open q and a and i will do my best to facilitate those two are the attorneys on our panel we are going to dive right into our next case study which addresses a tenant who is recovering from substance abuse we often see this as a type of barrier to housing opportunities a prospective tenant who is in recovery for alcohol addiction is searching for housing three years ago the prospective tenant was evicted for lease violations related to her misuse of alcohol since then the prospective tenant completed an inpatient recovery program and then lived with a family member she has not used alcohol in three years when she applies for an apartment the landlord rejects her based on her eviction history now audience i'm gonna ask you can the landlord do this really excellent interesting answers we seem to be divided across the three possible choices as they're coming in i'll leave the poll open for about another 10 seconds great well it looks like we're pretty divided so 57 of you suggest that the housing provider is able to reject the tenant based on their eviction history 17 of you suggest no and 26 of you are unclear jessica are you able to dive into this case study for us sure um so this is a little bit of a tricky situation um and it might be i think it's a lesser known issue of disability rights um and something that a lot of people may not be aware of eviction history used as an attendance screening technique is very very common and many la dlords do reject tenants based on their eviction history um however what a lot of people are not aware of is that substance abuse is considered a disability under the fair housing act as long as the person is not currently using drugs or alcohol and so in this situation the prospective tenant has been in recovery for about three years and is not currently using alcohol or drugs so they are considered a person with a disability under the fair housing act so in this case the tenant was rejected based on their eviction history which was directly related to their use of alcohol the tenant can make a reasonable accommodation request and ask that the landlord overlook the eviction because it was related to her disability and it was directly tied you know the lease violations that led to the eviction were directly tied to her disability um so the tenant is in recovery hasn't used alcohol so they would be entitled to make a reasonable accommodation request now the landlord doesn't need to just take their word for it you know the landlord can request a note from a treatment provider to support um to support the request if the landlord wasn't previously aware of this person's disability history and it might be helpful for the tenant to to also prevent uh present a note from the family member who they've been living with who's essentially been their landlord or roommate kind of showing that they're a you know a good a good tenant to serve as a reference um so so the answer is if the if the landlord rejects the tenant initially based on the eviction history the landlord can't or the tenant can make a reasonable accommodation request that the landlord should grant um and if people are interested in reasonable accommodations and the ins and outs and um you know more information on that i would suggest that they google the department of justice and hud joint statement on reasonable accommodations there's a lot of great information on the reasonable accommodation process and what landlords and housing providers should be evaluating when they're faced with a reasonable accommodation request jessica thank you so much so there's a quick question from the audience and it asks how are we getting this information to renters that may be discriminated against would any of you jessica yeah i would be grateful to follow up on that so at my office the connecticut fair housing center we have a great website with a lot of information on tenants legal rights we also have an education and outreach coordinator and she does presentations for community groups and various organizations around the state so you can always keep an eye on our website our blog or our twitter where we sometimes advertise events like these um we have a renter's guide and a homeowner's guide that we send out to all different organizations so if anyone's interested in getting either a training scheduled or getting any of our written materials you can reach out to me or finn or just send an email to info ctfairhousing.com and we're happy to send out any information or schedule training i just wanted to add the legal services programs around the state have a similar system you can go to ctlawhelp.org espanol tambien no solamente in english so it's in english and spanish and we have a whole variety of pro se that's do it yourself helping yourself know your rights pamphlets in all areas of civil law that we cover so that's a great resource too okay so um i'm just gonna the commission um that has its own housing section that has brochures on um what is discrimination uh disability discrimination and the like um you also can contact us directly we have a seatro.questions.ct.gov email address and then we also provide um free training throughout the state um and we will now that we're online it's very easy for us to conduct webinars which we do for um organizations um and also just in general so the commission offers free online for housing training um several times a year and the next one very uh conveniently is next wednesday the 14th um from 9 to 11 it's a general fair housing training it'll be done online and live so that you can ask questions um and if you're interested in um and attending that you can email me directly and then we'll start again next year we usually start in february but we also would do individual trainings also for free um and again you should contact me if you would like that thanks great and i'm just going to field a few more audience questions specifically about this case study to our panelists so jessica this question is for you um it is definitely a clarifying question and the attendee would just like to know if the answer is that the landlord can evict the tenant but the tenant is able to request a reasonable accommodation for overlooking the eviction yeah i mean if the landlord doesn't know that the tenant is entitled to a reasonable accommodation then you know that a reasonable accommodation request doesn't come into play until a tenant requests it so you know that if the ten if the landlord has a an eviction um eviction policy as a tenant screening tool and they're applying it sort of neutrally across the board then you know they may be able to reject them of course there are other issues that come into play with eviction eviction screenings they can have a disproportionate impact on people in other protected classes but that's kind of outside the scope of this question great thank you so much jessica um and i am seeing several questions about attendees looking for more information on all of our case studies and sign of the answers for both tenants and housing providers i would strongly suggest that attendees explore the websites of the organizations represented today and i am happy to ask uh our hosts uh cch to help me put together um just a list of websites for attendees with these resources available so without further ado we're going to dive in right to our next case study here that addresses um what happens when a tenant has a criminal background so a private landlord runs a background check landlord says to the potential tenant i won't write to you because of your results of your criminal background check the background check shows a misdemeanor conviction for eight years ago for shoplifting audience can the landlord do that i love that you all dived right in this is so fantastic going to give the pulling just another second great we have about 80 participation in the polling that's really wonderful and i will share the results seems to be pretty divided between yes no and maybe there is an overwhelming uh majority of people who believe that the landlord is able to create a barrier to housing based on this individual's criminal background so amy are you able to dive into this case study for our audience yes they can and i think those results are really interesting because they reflect sort of where the law is in this area which is um not as clear as i wish it would be so the law in connecticut there is no law currently that says explicitly landlords cannot ask about criminal backgrounds or cannot consider it it is not we i think most of you know you know landlords can't say i won't rent to you based on your race or your gender or your sexual orientation or various other protected classes criminal background check is not one of those protected classes but what the law has found is because of the disparate racial impact of asking about criminal backgrounds and criminal background tests um in connecticut and throughout the country that can be a suspect class that can be a grounds for discrimination and so what hud has recommended and suggested to landlords if they don't want to face the possibility of a fair housing challenge hud has suggested that um landlords and considering criminal backgrounds do not have a blank cannot have a blanket policy saying i won't rent anybody with a criminal background that would be considered illegal landlords are supposed to do what's called an individualized assessment that means that they look at a bunch of different factors how long ago was a conviction what was it for was it something that was severe and something that would impact somebody's ability to be a good tenant and what kind of changes has anybody gone through since that time um why were to do that controverized assessment in this case you would see that you would think that eight years ago for splifting should not affect somebody's ability to be a good tenant i'm i'm fearing that i am frozen here because i'm seeing a frozen screen in front of me are you able to hear me okay amy yes we're still able to hear you okay okay so we hope the law will change in this area to make it more clear and more explicit but um but i think the polling data shows pretty much how it's not as clear an area of law as we hope it will be someday a lot of people working on on trying to get um laws to say to to at least put in the laws the kind of considerations that hud recommends for all tenants the one other thing i wanted to include is landlords but it is quite clear landlords can't consider arrests so at least if landlords are looking at criminal background they can only consider convictions they certainly can't consider arrests thank you so much amy for that question jessica would you like to add to amy's answer sure yeah i just one thing i wanted to add was a lot of landlords will use criminal background screening companies um and we have a case at the connecticut fair housing center right now that's pending in federal court where we've recently gotten a decision from the court saying that these tenant screening companies can face liability under the fair housing act due to these criminal background screening products and so if landlords are using one of these companies to basically make a decision to accept a tenant or deny a tenant based on their criminal records they need to be very careful in doing that because the landlord and the screening company can face liability if they don't do an individualized assessment of someone's background and so it's really important that landlords echo amy do consider the nature and the severity of the events when it occurred and any rehabilitation efforts that the tenant has made since the time of the offense um otherwise they can face a legal challenge and it's it's not going to be a defense to say well the tenant screening company told me to reject this person the landlord really has to take responsibility for um for their own actions and their own tenant screening despite whatever tools they may be using um to help them thank you so much jessica i have a question from the audience related to this case study and the audience member is asking can you request a reasonable accommodation request for a criminal background not to be assessed during tenant screening who would like to take does it yeah thank you um sure yeah so yes a tenant can make a reasonable accommodation request to ask a landlord to overlook a criminal background if if the incident was related to a disability this is a very fact fact heavy scenario so it's hard to sort of give examples but i think if someone had an offense in their background um it was related to a disability and now they have you know completed their you know their undergoing treatment or they're on medication or going through therapy or something that has helped um alleviate the symptoms of the disability that led to the the arrest or the conviction then they could make a reasonable accommodation request i think it would be especially helpful to have information from a treatment provider to support that request so the landlord is not being asked to just take the person's word for it but i think that's a good good thing good rule of thumb to keep in mind for all tenants it's helpful to have some supporting documentation from a treatment provider or other person who's in a position to know about the person's disability great thank you so much jessica and then just a reminder to the audience because it's coming up through the chat is yes this workshop will be recorded and archived so you will be able to access all this information again as needed so i'm going to dive right into our next case study um and this one i'm not going to do an audience call for um i would really like jessica to dive right in after we allow the audience to um consider the questions so this case study um discusses what happens when a tenant was a victim of intimate partner violence so a tenant experienced intimate partner violence by her former boyfriend at her last apartment during her tenancy the police were frequently called to her apartment the tenant broke her lease during the lease term in order to flee to shelter the tenant applied for federally subsidized housing she just received a rejection letter from the housing provider based on a bad landlord reference the former landlord told the new housing provider that she and her former boyfriend were a nuisance to neighbors who complained about noise and police visits and that she broke her lease can the subsidized housing provider reject her based on this reference i would be very curious to know how the audience would respond to this question because i think it's it's another one of these questions that's kind of difficult and it may not be common knowledge um what the sort of the legal implications at play here um but so the subsidized housing provider shouldn't reject her based on this reference if the if the tenant alerts the subsidized housing provider to the fact that the eviction history was related to intimate partner violence or domestic violence um so in this case the tenant will have can take advantage of protections offered by the violence against women act and for those who are not familiar the violence against women act applies to people both you know men women or someone of any gender who has experienced domestic violence dating violence sexual assault and stalking um and so a federal subsidized housing provider should not deny an applicant based on something in a tenant's background that is a direct result of domestic violence so that can apply to a poor rental history like here where there's you know complaints of nuisance due to noise and police being called and there's a the breaking of the lease by the tenant but it can also relate to things like a poor credit history due to domestic violence failure to pay rent or even a criminal record like if the police were called and both parties were arrested in a domestic violence situation so in this case as i said the eviction um and the noise complaints or the breaking of the lease and the noise complaints were due to domestic violence and so the tenant should inform the housing provider that she'd like to exercise her rights under vala and the housing provider should allow the tenant to certify that she she is has experienced domestic violence and asked them to overlook the badlands reference because it's related to domestic violence or intimate partner violence for people who want more information on landlords obligations and tenants rights related to violence against women act there's really thorough hud guidance on this so if you google um hud vawa regulations or hud vowel guidelines you can find really lengthy examples and guidance on on how vawa affects landlords and tenants um and then one other thing i wanted to add with respect to the the tenant having broken her lease and fled from the initial property was under connecticut law it's general statute 47a-11e tenants who are experiencing family violence or sexual assault can break their lease and move if they give the landlord 30 days notice and it should be without penalty so in this case i think the landlord if the landlord was made aware of why she was leaving and was given the 30 days notice and then he's still giving her a bad reference um that that may be in violation of this statute and um so anyway there's there's more to it than that so i would suggest that anyone who's interested in this particular provision just look it up um in the general statutes great amy would you like to add to jessica's analysis of this case study i think she's covered it pretty well [Laughter] statute in there too excellent and i have a question from the audience um does this only apply to subsidized hous ng providers so this applies to federally subsidized housing providers and then um also people who have section 8 vouchers but i think this is a little bit of um a nuanced area that i think is a little bit too big to cover in the time that we have left but i will say that even for private housing providers if a tenant is in a situation like this where they have a negative landlord history or negative rental history related to domestic violence and the tenant can let the landlord know that and try to explain um and if the landlord refuses to allow them to live there then there there could be an argument that that's sex discrimination under the fair housing act because women are disproportionately impacted by domestic violence and sort of bear the brunt of the poor rental history that may um may come along with domestic violence but if anyone's experiencing that or needs more information feel free to reach out to me directly and we can we can chat and i just wanted to add the state law that jessica talked about that says tenants can break their lease if there's a domestic violence situation that does apply to everybody not just subsidized housing great and i have another question from the audience concerning this case study and the question is if the client is fleeing um to shelter to escape domestic violence they have a section eight voucher are they at risk of losing their voucher because they've left their unit so the tenant um the tenant should let the housing authority know what's going on and housing authorities are supposed to in their administrative plan have emergency um i can't remember what the hud term is but they should have some type of emergency housing available for the tenant or a sort of a plan for the tenant who alerts them um but again there's a lot of details and nuance involved in these types of situations so i would say check out the hud guidance or feel free to call my office or i think amy's office probably could could handle this as well thank you so much for that wonderful answer so our next case study um involves somebody using a housing subsidy right a section 8 voucher to pay for their rent so it transitions quite nicely into some of the questions that um are being asked by our panelists and this case study asks a mother is trying to leave the shelter she has a new section 8 voucher housing voucher and is seeking an apartment for herself and her 15 year old son the landlord explains to the woman that he does not like teenagers she views the unit and determines it will fit them perfectly she applies for the property and the landlord then tells her that the unit is not eligible for the section eight audience i would like to know if you believe if the tenant can do this or if the landlord can sorry amy the landlord can do this great you all jumped right back into polling i'm so glad that we didn't lose you i'm going to keep the polling open for about another six seconds really wonderful response to the audience thank you amy these results should interest you about five percent of our audience suggested the landlord is able to do this 81 suggested they are not able to and a good 15 is confused well a great thing about doing these trainings too is it can be very affirming for the folks participating with these polls that you know a lot of the law already so it's great to know that and of course the reason that we do this as we ask before is to is to try to get the word out and to folks like so many service providers we saw are participating today and landlords to know what what's allowed and what isn't allowed so there are two problems here first one is the landlord saying they don't want teenagers second one is the landlord saying their the unit is not eligible for section 8. both of those things are illegal under connecticut law because in connecticut landlords cannot discriminate against families with children and that includes all children whether teenagers babies any any age children and also in connecticut landlords cannot discriminate based on what's called source of income and that means that landlords can't say oh i only take working people or i don't take people who are on welfare or i don't take section 8 or i don't take security deposit guarantees from the state or any other legal source of income a landlord cannot discriminate based on any lawful source of income so in this case the landlord saying i don't like teenagers and then saying i don't take section eight um you know it's not eligible for section eight obviously in the department doesn't pass the section eight inspection there's the process that has to go through but a landlord cannot refuse to um work with the tenant uh section 8 and landlord cannot refuse to rent to somebody because of their familial status including whether they have children of any age excellent and this is a case we see often in our office about 10 of the complaints discriminate complaints of discrimination in our office are a result of somebody trying to access a housing opportunity with a voucher um i have a question from the audience that asks if the client has a section 8 voucher but has no income is the housing provider able to deny them the housing opportunity because they have no income no it's the same issue because of course the way section 8 works is it's based on 30 of the adjusted gross income of the tenant so that means that if the tenant has no income for some period of time section 8 will be paying the entire rent and might even be paying a utility check to the tenant to cover the utility payments so no matter what the tenant's income is if they have section 8 it shouldn't matter and it doesn't matter as a matter of law i wanted to add one thing if we have time this is a little bit of a tricky question in the way that the landlord phrased the denial based on section 8 the landlord tells the tenant that the unit is not eligible for section 8. a lot of the cases we see you know we might see an advertisement or a landlord telling a tenant no section a or i don't accept section 8. but in this case it seems like the landlord is being a little bit um i don't know more tricky by saying the unit is not eligible for section 8 we also see cases where landlords will tell tenants oh section 8 won't approve or you know this isn't a section 8 approved unit those are all discrimination as amy said sort of no matter how it's phrased and sometimes we'll see cases where the the unit will go for an exp inspection it will fail for whatever reason maybe a window needs to be replaced or there's something wrong with the outlets in the kitchen just sort of minor things and the landlord will refuse to fix it and say well you know i can't run to you that's discrimination as well unless the landlord is removing the unit from the rental market um entirely because if the landlord refuses to fix things for someone who has section 8 and then rents to someone without section 8 because they don't have to go through an inspection that is still discrimination on the basis of lawful source of income just to follow up on the excellent point that jessica's making remember that all the what's called housing quality standards all the things that section 8 does inspections for and requires landlords to fix those are all part of the housing codes in the towns and this and throughout the state and so it's not like section 8 is imposing some additional obligations for repairs on landlords that they are not lawfully required to do in any event by the state housing and building codes and the local housing and building codes great thank you so much panelists we have several questions from the audience coming in about this particular case study and um barriers to housing based on the use of a subsidy so i'm going to permit a little bit more time to answer some of these questions um an audience member asks can a landlord deny you housing if your income is unemployment insurance no i just actually i just got that question last week from a housing provider um the definition is a lawful source of income other than employment and so unemployment is a lawful source of income i know arguments are tried are made by housing providers that it may be for a short period of time but there's also housing subsidies that are not uh section 8 that are still going to be considered lawful sources of income and so um so unemployment income would be considered a lawful source of income i would just note with that i imagine the the basis as a landlord saying well you're getting unemployment now you're not you know you don't have a job so how do i know you're going to be able to pay the rent when your unemployment is over and although i can understand the landlord's concern if you rent an apartment to somebody who's employed that does not guarantee that they're going to continue to be employed a month or two from now and if you rent an apartment to somebody who's receiving unemployment compensation that doesn't say anything about you know their chances of getting employment before their unemployment compensation runs out so it's really i agree with michelle that would constitute source of income discrimination thank you we have an audience member who would like to know if there is any exceptions to um the use of a subsidy the only exception is for an owner-occupied duplex so the only exception that would allow a tenant not or a landlord not to accept a section voucher is if the landlord lives in one unit of a two unit building or although i would say um that that is the law in connecticut however i think there would be an argument to be made that by if a landlord had a policy of not accepting a section 8 voucher that could have a disparate impact based on race or national origin um and so i think they could face a legal challenge that way under federal law i do want to add though too that a tenant with a section 8 voucher still has to go through the general landlord screening process and so that if they're they have to be otherwise qualified even if they have a section 8 voucher so it's just important to note too that um if a landlord is rejecting somebody because of a criminal background check or credit um even though they have the voucher while i wouldn't say there's no peace there because you need to see what they're using as a screening process who they use it with sometimes landlords will not screen all tenants they may just be screening the section 8 tenants um so you do want to look further into that but but tenants do need to be otherwise qualified beyond the voucher and so um i think you know there might be some situations if the tenant has really bad uh credit um that you'd want to look you wouldn't just say yeah that's fine but you do want to look more into that thank you so much michelle when we were preparing for this conference we had lots of dialogue like this and it was just really interesting to listen to my colleagues um so our next uh case study involves a tenant who is seeking the an emotional support animal a mother and her daughter enter a shelter the shelter has a no pet policy the child experiences depression and anxiety and her therapist has recommended that she get a dog as an emotional support animal the mother asks a shelter worker for permission to get a dog for an emotional support for her daughter the shelter says no because that is their policy the mother persists explaining that her daughter really needs the dog for emotional support and gives the shelter a letter from the therapist supporting the request for the dog the shelter says the note is insufficient and they want to review her medical records from the date she was diagnosed audience i'm going to have you try to answer this question and before i pass it to our panelists i love that so many of you are still with us answering our polls and paying attention to our extremely smart panelists i'm going to leave the poll open for about another five seconds but it's great to see over 80 of you participating all right michelle this question will go to you so i'll share the results about eight percent of our attendees believe the shelter providers are able to deny access to an emotional support animal 76 suggest that the shelter cannot and 16 of our audience is unsure yay so um so emotional support animals are probably one of the most um contentious a reasonable accommodations that we receive at the commission and in housing and we're going to take this shelter as a housing and not as a public accommodation the people who live in housing who have disabilities have the right to um to have an emotional support animal and the housing provider may ask for documentation uh if it's not an obvious disability which um um depression anxiety may not be an obvious disability um but uh asking to seek medical records and to view medical records is going a bit too far um the housing provider can ask to engage in what's the interactive process if beyond the note the housing provider wants to have a discussion with the service provider very limited to the nexus between the support animal and the child's disability um then that's something that can be explored i think the thing that comes up the most with service animals and i'm going to run faster this because i know we don't have a lot of time is where the initial documentation of the need is coming from and so we are getting a lot um of uh notes that are coming from um these online providers who may not actually really be a treating professional but are a way that some people uh may use that method in order to be able to keep a what may be a pet which is not a service animal um in a place that does not allow um dogs or cats or whatever the animal may be so i think it's important to know um that uh you want to be mindful that you have a good note um that these online providers um will likely be challenged to the point of us getting an answer about it we get a few cases with the online providers they manage to not they've never gotten past our housing investigation phase um and so um you want to be cautious of that i think you want to really explain to landlords though too that especially especially in this time of covid there are a lot more you are engaging with your health care provider online i think in some ways it's really helpful now because i think a lot of people that is how they do see their health providers and so it kind of takes away the stigma uh from that you might be trying to pull a fast one over on your housing provider so this can be a very complicated area again i very much advise you contact us if you're in that situation great i have one very quick question i'm hoping one of my panelists can answer is an emotional support animal the same as a service animal so an emotional support animal and a service animal so the service animal provides an actual service to the person with a disability and so you're going to see a definition of the ada that a service animal has to provide an actual service to the person who has the disability and it's limited to a dog or a small pony which i haven't seen yet if one of you have seen a small pony please let me know um and the reason that the small pony is in the definition is because they live longer than dogs do and it takes obviously a lot of time and money to train um and so emotional support animal isn't necessarily providing a service like picking up the remote control from the floor which i had a client when i was at the fair housing center that was what one of her what her service animal did and so there is a difference under housing um it it doesn't really matter for purposes of a housing provider needing to accept that as an accommodation because we don't just go by the ada definition the under housing and the fair housing act bo state and federal our definition is much um more liberal and allows for emotional support animals of any variety cat dog bunny lizard snake whatever it may be it's much broader in the fair housing world thank you so much michelle i wanted to add one thing um just to echo something important that michelle said if that's okay finn yeah so michelle was talking about the the internet-based or app-based therapists and i just wanted to stress that there's a difference between receiving therapy online like that versus one of these websites that laims to certify your animal um and give you like a registration certificate or something like that those types of websites there is no like government registry of um service animals or emotional support animals and so those are basically taking advantage of tenants having them pay like 75 dollars for a certificate that has no legal meaning and i think landlords and tenants get confused landlords will ask well is your dog certified or is your dog registered but there's no significance to that and so i just wanted to clarify that and say what's important is that the the tenant has spoken with a therapist or treating provider or social worker or someone who recommends that they receive the animal um but not you know there is no certificate you can print out that has any legal meaning i would like to just quickly add before we moved into our very quick um yes and no question phase is that if your organization needs assistance understanding the difference between emotional support animals pets and service animals uh the connecticut housing center partners with ccdh to offer that training several times a year and we would be happy to bring it back so our final portion of this is i'm gonna pitch these questions to our panelists and these are common landlord tenant and discrimination issues that we see amy this first question is for you how much money in the form of security deposits can a landlord require at the signing of the lease in most cases the landlord can ask for two months security deposit but if the tenant is 62 or older then by state law they can only ask for one month thank you so much amy this next question is also for you if a landlord writes a letter to a tenant telling them they need to vacate their unit by a certain date and the tenant doesn't vacate can the landlord change the locks or turn off their electricity absolutely not if they do so it is a crime and it's called criminal lockout they also can't remove the door or do anything that stops the tenant from being able to live there in a secure way so even if removing the door would constitute a lockout as well great thank you amy um can a landlord agree to accept housing assistance and then rent to someone else without housing assistance because the paperwork is taking too long uh no they cannot um the supreme court in the two sullivan cases recognize that taking housing assistance might have a few more steps associated with just taking employment income but that's built into the protected class a housing provider may have to take a little bit longer but i think it's kind of a little bit of an urban legend of how long it really takes and so um you do need to go with the tenant that you originally accepted who has section 8 and not somebody else with employment income because it's faster great thank you so much michelle and this last question is to jessica if a housing coordinator approaches a landlord about a prospective tenant with a rapid re-housing assistance or a security deposit guarantee and the landlord verbally refuses to accept the housing assistance but gives a different reason for rejection after reviewing the tenant's application can they do that so this is something that i think housing coordinators experience a lot and i would say that initially refusing to accept the security deposit guarantee or the rapid re-housing assistance and then giving a different reason later suggests pre-tax and it does suggest discrimination on the basis of lawful source of income so i would suggest that the housing coordinator or the tenant in that situation give our office a call or contact chro the housing coordinator would be a witness in that case and i think trying to get that in writing would be would be important in order to establish a case of discrimination great i'm just thanks and so i just want to take a minute before we close here to acknowledge that we are living in completely unprecedented times that are greatly affecting the housing stability of the constituents we care about most there are resources available on our website www.ctfairhousing.org there are also resources available on www.ctlaw.health.org that amy referenced earlier and if you would like your organization to receive any more training or to receive information on covenant moratoria or the fair housing laws please don't hesitate to email me my email address is there below thank you so much connecticut coalition to end homelessness and our panelists for this opportunity this morning and that concludes our panel