Housing Accommodation Process

What do I do if I need a Service animal/ Emotional Support Animal, wheelchair accessibility, or any other special needs that require accommodations in my living space that is an exception to housing policy?

• All requests that require an exception to policy due to a disability will require a Disability Service (DS) intake (i.e. Service animal/ Emotional Support Animal, wheelchair accessibility, etc).
• Make an appointment to meet with the Disability Coordinator at (808) 675-3518, email aunal@byuh.edu, or visit Mcky 181 (across the front entrance of the Cafeteria).
• Bring in documentation of disability to Disability Services for initial assessment.
• If deemed eligible for housing accommodations, Disability Services will prepare a letter of accommodation (LOA) which the sudent is responsible to pick up and deliver to housing. Disability Services will also send the LOA via email attachment to Housing Office.
• Coordinate with Housing Office the feasibility, approval, and action plan for Housing accommodations (LOA does not guarantee an exception to the Housing policy).

To have a service animal, a person must be so impaired as to have a disability. For example, needing glasses for poor vision is an impairment, but being unable to see with or without glasses is a disability. Having a mental illness is an impairment, but being unable to function on a minimal level because of a mental illness is a disability. Service animals are task trained to actually do something which mitigates the person's disability. Their defined function is not to provide emotional support (affection on demand or a security blanket) but to do something the handler cannot do for themselves which allows that handler to overcome or ameliorate an inability to perform major life activities. A service animal is a dog or a miniature horse.

• Real tasks for PSDs (psychiatric service dogs) include counterbalance/bracing for a handler dizzy from medication, waking the handler on the sound of an alarm when the handler is heavily medicated and sleeps through alarms, doing room searches or turning on lights for persons with PTSD, blocking persons in dissociative episodes from wandering into danger (i.e. traffic), leading a disoriented handler to a designated person or place, and so on.
• For more information about service dogs, click here.

An emotional support animal provides therapeutic support to a person with a mental health-related disability. They are often referred to as therapy animals, companion animals, or comfort animals by both the public and health professionals.

• While all animals provide love and emotional support, the designation of emotional support animal is only applicable to animals which have been prescribed by a licensed mental health professional. The mental health professional must document the need for their client to have an emotional support animal, which is typically done in the form of a letter.

• For more information about emotional support animals, click here.