Who Qualifies as Disabled under the Fair Housing Acts?
The federal Fair Housing Act and the Fair Housing Amendments Act (42 U.S. Code §§ 3601-3619, 3631) forbid discrimination of tenants or prospective tenants because of a disability or the disability of a person associated with them. The law protects the following people: • A person with a mental or physical disability that substantially limits a person’s ability to perform one or more major life activities; or • A person that has a record of the disability; or • A person that is considered by others as having the disability Types of protected disabilities include mobile, visual, and hearing impairments, mental retardation, alcoholism (if being treated in a recovery program), drug addiction (not caused by the use of an illegal controlled substance), mental illness, HIV, AIDS, and AIDS-Related Complex.
