Categories:
Discrimination
Case Study
You own an apartment building and one of the renters has been diagnosed with a disease that means she now is using a wheelchair. Your apartment building is old and it has several steps up to the building and then a few more inside. This means the renter isn’t able to leave her apartment using her wheelchair and has to instead have people carry her down and back up these steps. Your renter has asked you to build a ramp, but you know building a ramp would be expensive and disruptive to the other people in the building. Besides, you are not even sure if the city would approve this construction for your building. Instead, you recommend that the renter find a new building that already has a ramp that meets her needs.
-
Are you meeting your responsibilities under the Code?
No, you are not meeting your responsibilities under the Code. You are making assumptions about how much it would cost to provide your renter with a reasonable accommodation. You are also making assumptions about whether the city would allow you to build a ramp and how that would impact other renters. You have not taken any steps to confirm the cost or application process for building a ramp or explored any other options for accommodating your renter. It is not a reasonable accommodation to simply tell your renter to move to a new building. You cannot say it would be an undue hardship to accommodate your renter if you have not taken any steps to inform yourself about what an accommodation would include.