Advocating for Tenants with Disabilities in Landlord Disputes

For Video Player Technical Assistance, please contact SeminarWeb at 737-201-2059 or support@seminarweb.com.

Advocating for Tenants with Disabilities in Landlord Disputes

Program Originally presented Thursday, May 9, 2024

People with disabilities, as well as the deaf and hard of hearing, routinely experience discrimination at the hands of landlords. Disabilities create specific needs in housing that too often go unmet. This can lead to disputes with landlords who refuse or ignore requests for accommodation, and people with disabilities may fall behind on rent, withhold rent due to unmet needs, or suffer consequences to their health, well-being, and housing security. Common issues faced by tenants with disabilities include:

• Timing of benefits payments in relation to rent due dates.
• Difficulty using the landlord’s preferred payment method (e.g. web portals).
• Requests for reasonable accommodation that are ignored, or unreasonably denied (including transfers to another unit due to inaccessibility or health-threatening conditions).

In this practical presentation, panelists will also provide:

• An overview of a landlord’s legal responsibilities to tenants with disabilities with a focus on the federal Fair Housing Act.
• A detailed discussion of the issues people with disabilities and the deaf and hard of hearing face. Learn how these issues create housing insecurity, and what advocates can try to do to address problems proactively.
• Finally, hear the perspective of an attorney from the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations about what might happen if advice and advocacy fail, and a tenant takes a complaint to the Commission. This portion of the program will provide insight into the Commission’s process and what a tenant needs to present to the commission to be successful.

Attend this program to learn how best to advocate for tenants with disabilities in landlord disputes.

Panelists:
Christina Drzal, Esq.
Managing Attorney of Litigation
Disability Rights Pennsylvania

Sherry Thomas, Esq.
Director, Housing Initiative
Legal Clinic for the Disabled

Karen Forman, Esq.
Commission on Human Relations
City of Philadelphia

Moderator:
Todd W. Nothstein, Esq.
Staff Attorney
Philadelphia Legal Assistance

0217ODV