News

Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like it. My Home is my Castle. We have lots of expressions that tell us that having a safe and comfortable home is essential for our wellbeing. The current debates about housing affordability and homelessness reinforce this – at a deep level we know that without a safe and secure place to rest our heads, nothing is quite right.

It is no different for people with disability. However, safe and secure housing has certainly not been the norm. Following decades of institutionalisation, people were moved into what was believed to be better accommodation, mostly group homes in the community. Despite good intentions, these ended up as quasi-institutional living with a prettier face.

In recent years, there have been calls to dismantle these group home settings, and with the advent of the NDIS, we have seen new funding models for independent living for people with disability who require a range of intensive supports. It’s been a game changer for people who have moved from group home settings, aged care, inadequate community housing or the family home into Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) – modern mainstream accommodation. Yippee!

What could go wrong? Plenty, actually. Even though there are more quality options and more funding is being provided, it is a sector totally dominated by providers, financiers and complex government rules. Many of the staff that support people living in these new models of accommodation also have a mindset that belongs more in the good old days of institutionalised care, than in the human rights driven era we should be seeing.

Tenant Voice is a NDIA funded project that is designed to amplify the voices of people with disability who live in the new SDA accommodation, who have been overlooked in the rush to support developers and support providers to build, and build quickly. As we have started our consultations, we have been shocked to learn that some of the support provided is not just inadequate, but criminal.

One of the models of SDA features a ‘ten plus one’ apartment arrangement where, for example, in a block of 100 apartments, ten apartments are designed for people with very high physical support needs, such as for people who use wheelchairs, and there is an eleventh apartment that is staffed 24 hours a day to provide incidental and emergency support shared among the 10 apartments. The workers get used to working closely with their clients, and sometimes this can lead to worker behaviour that becomes a bit too casual – workers forget they are providing a paid service to someone who is their employer, not a family member.

People with disability report to us again and again that disability support workers use their keys or fobs to enter the apartment without knocking. Yep, that’s right: they just barge right in. James said, ‘I was having a shower when all of a sudden a stranger, a worker I had never met before, just walked in.’ Jasmine told us a similar story: ‘I moved into my new SDA home with my wife. We’d only been there a few weeks and one evening someone just entered using a key. We had no idea who they were or that anyone else had a key’.

For any other community member having a shower in their own home, we would scream at them and call the police and have the person charged. It would be a horrifying and traumatic experience. For people with disability who are so used to poor treatment at the hands of providers, it’s a frustration, but mostly business as usual. Making a complaint is an option, but many people are scared to complain because they rely on service providers every single moment of their lives, and to be labelled a ‘troublemaker’ presents great risk. People have also told us that they don’t believe complaining will change anything anyway.

We spoke to Rachael Thompson, who is a lawyer at Villamanta Legal Service that specialise in assisting people with disabilities, and she said,

The key to an SDA property should not be something a provider can freely access. SDA residents have tenancy rights to be treated with dignity, respect, and their privacy protected. Providers breach tenancy law if they enter someone’s SDA home without following proper legal steps, especially without the resident’s permission.

SDA residents should know they can ask for free independent legal support if they feel uncomfortable about a provider’s access to their home.

Not only is it a breach of tenancy law, but in most states, entering without permission can be a criminal offence and may attract fines and penalties.

So how do we change the provider behaviour? It’s time to get real and treat this provider’s behaviour seriously.

People with disability have the same rights to a safe and secure home as anyone else. Entering an SDA property without permission is a serious breach of tenancy law. Providers are on notice — there is no reason they should have greater access to someone’s home than any other residential rental provider.

In the words of one tenant: ‘Providers you are on notice – Yellow Card, Red Card, call the police. Don’t say you weren’t warned.’

There are many issues that SDA tenants need to advocate about, but this one is simply intolerable in 2025.

To our friends who are SDA Tenants: if you are facing problems with providers not respecting your tenancy rights, you can contact:

• Victoria: Villamanta Disability Rights Legal Service on 1800 014 111 or legal@villamanta.org.au
• Or find a community legal centre in your state for advice: Community Legal Centres Australia.

For more on SDA and your rights, please visit Tenant Voice. We’re passionate about putting people with disability at the centre of SDA’s design, implementation, and evaluation.