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Hello and welcome to Disability Law Lowdown’s ASL podcast. My name is AJ Roupp. We are so glad that you found us and we hope you enjoy the different ASL podcasts we put together.

Today’s podcast is about housing and your rights under the ADA as a person who is deaf or hard of hearing when you buy or rent housing. We will be talking about different laws when we’re talking about buying or renting, so let’s cover buying first.

Buying a place.

There are three entities: real estate offices – people who sell houses or buildings or homes, title companies – they hold the contract or deed that proves who owns the house or building, and mortgage companies – who you send payments to for the house or building. All three are covered by Title III section under ADA. Because of that, they have a responsibility to their clients who are deaf or hard of hearing to provide support aids and services when necessary to provide effective communication. Communication with others involved in buying or selling a house or building is vital. You need to have an interpreter for effective communication. If there is no interpreter, it is more likely that misunderstandings will occur between the two or more people involved. It is probable that a deaf or hard of hearing person will sign a contract that he does not completely understand if there is not an interpreter to clarify communication.

Deaf sellers or buyers may need a sign language interpreter to be able to effectively communicate at different stages during the process. Family members and friends should never be called upon to interpret when buying or selling a house. You need an interpreter who can interpret effectively, accurately, impartially, both receptively and expressively, and use any specialized vocabulary used in the business of buying or selling. Real estate offices, title companies, and mortgage companies cannot pass on the cost of providing the interpreter on to the client in the form of legal fees, closing costs, commissions or any other kind of fee.

Renting a place.

When you rent housing, that is usually covered by the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. It is against the law for anyone to refuse to rent housing, or set different rules for rental or use of housing, because of disability. Under Fair Housing Act, when it comes to renting, landlords have two main responsibilities. Landlords must allow tenants who have disabilities to modify their own rental unit. like a room, apartment, or condominium, if a modification is necessary to allow the person to have what the law calls “full enjoyment” of that place.

There are two really important things to know about this. One is that you have to pay for the modifications yourself. The landlord does not have to pay for modifications to your apartment. The other thing is that you will have to restore the premises back to same condition that it was in before modification, before you added a doorbell or alarm. You have to remove these things before you move out, and make sure it’s like it was when you moved it.

The other big responsibility of the landlord, under the Fair Housing Act, is that reasonable accommodations in polices and services must be made and that applies to landlords, homeowner associations, and even condominium management companies. If an accommodation must be made to any rule, policy, practice or service in order to allow person with disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy that place, then that accommodation must be made.

Some of more common policy accommodations for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing are waiving the “no pets” policy for a service animal, providing interpreters an association meetings, and providing an equally effective alternative for deaf tenants to enter a building that requires an intercom system.

Public housing.

If you live in public housing, then that housing may not discriminate against tenants with disabilities. If the public housing receives funding from HUD, the landlord is responsible for paying to install visible doorbells, visual fire alarms and other modifications. If you have a complaint about housing discrimination, you can file it with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), or you may file suit in state or federal court. Thanks for watching this ASL podcast.

I hope you enjoyed watching this ASL video podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can subscribe either through iTunes or our website at ASL.DisabilityLawLowdown.com where you can watch all of the episodes.

The Disability Law Lowdown (DLL) is sponsored by the Disability and Business Technical Assistance Centers, a network of ten ADA Centers around the country that provide training and technical assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA Centers are supported by NIDRR.

You can call us at 1-800-949-4232 (V/TTY). That is a voice line, so you can use video relay services, but that is not a VP number. You can also call direct to that number using a TTY.

Thanks for watching us!