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OMG. Do you remember how annoying it is to share with your siblings? A bedroom? A backseat in the car? Air? Complaining to your parents that your sibling/s are ‘on your side’ of the whatever (room/seat/universe). I do. Most of us don’t live with our siblings now, but we have clear memories of the good times/excellent times/infuriating times. I think some of the intensity of the feelings is because we didn’t choose it. Ah well, that’s the lot of childhood and siblingship. As adults we get to choose who we live with and generally accept that is part of autonomy and citizenship of adulthood. 

Pretty straightforward, right? 

Nope. For people with disability, despite decades of work towards de-institutionalisation, many do not enjoy the same housing rights as mainstream Australia. NDIA participants who have high support needs and qualify for SDA housing, this is a perpetual and unresolved human rights issue. Many participants in the scheme have told Tenant Voice that NDIA will agree that they need SDA to meet their significant support needs, BUT,  they must share a property. Often with strangers. It’s been going on for a while. Where does this leave people who prefer to live alone, as one quarter of the mainstream Australian population do? Or even people who, for a range of reasons such as mental health pressures, have to live alone? It presents a bizarre contradiction: the system offers the dream of independent living and ‘a home for life’ with one hand (that is consistent with the our obligations as signatories to the UN Conventions on the Rights of People with Disabilities), while the other hand forces a return to quasi institutionalised care and a denial of choice. Headspinning, but sadly true.

Many of the SDA participants we have spoken to tell us that they live alone now in SDA because they appealed the NDIA decision for enforced sharing. Because as adults, they want to exercise the same choice mainstream Australia enjoys by choosing who they live with. For others who live in SDA legacy group homes, many, or most, tenants have never had the choice of how they want to live and with whom, and sadly never will. 

When you think about who doesn’t have a choice of who they live with, it is an interesting cohort. Some older people in aged care may not reside there by choice. This, of course, is not ideal, and an article for another day, but the average stay for people in aged care is about two years. A completely different situation for people with disability being told by NDIA that they have to share with strangers, like, forever?

Another group who are forced to share are prisoners. They also don’t have choice about who they live with, but as average sentences are about 8 months (2021 Prison Dilemma Report) for prisoners this situation is rarely a life sentence (data on prison populations is very clear that disadvantage is a clear driver of those in contact with the justice system, and that people with disabilities are over-represented in prison population, particularly ABI and psycho-social disability). 

The comparison with the prison population is a challenging one, because of the systematic discrimination of people with disability in the justice system, but stay with me. One of the key differences is that in the justice system you have legal representation: an impartial person such as a magistrate who looks at your ‘offending’ history and tries as much as possible to divert you from a poor outcome and incarceration. If you are imprisoned, it is with a definable period, which could be shorter if you ‘behave yourself’. For people who have SDA in their plans at a forced shared ratio, it is the government deciding that you should share with others, regardless of your preference. For nobody knows how long.

So why is it happening? Oh, come on, you know why. It’s the $. The assumption that people sharing housing and support being cheaper is pervasive. It may be right in some cases, but we also have been told that forced sharing can exacerbate stress, anxiety and support needs, which escalates costs in plans. It also can lead to higher turnover in housing, bringing its own transaction, assessment, administrative and human costs.

It’s also related to the pressure created on the NDIS from the over-supply of SDA properties with too many bedrooms that need to be occupied to keep the SDA system solvent. 

Don’t get me wrong, sharing with others can be fun, life-enriching and the bedrock of lifelong relationships. A happy shared house happens when people choose their home, their housemates, and how they want to live their lives, not when someone else chooses for them. 

This enforced sharing decision making is against what most Australians would accept in their personal lives, and in direct contradiction to our responsibilities as signatories to the UN Charter on the Rights of People with Disabilities, with Article 19 of the Conventions on the Rights of People with Disabilities:

States Parties to the present Convention recognize the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community, with choices equal to others, and shall take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate full enjoyment by persons with disabilities of this right and their full inclusion and participation in the community, including by ensuring that:

1. 1. a) Persons with disabilities have the opportunity to choose their place of residence and where and with whom they live on an equal basis with others and are not obliged to live in a particular living arrangement;
   2. b) Persons with disabilities have access to a range of in-home, residential and other community support services, including personal assistance necessary to support living and inclusion in the community, and to prevent isolation or segregation from the community;
   3. c) Community services and facilities for the general population are available on an equal basis to persons with disabilities and are responsive to their needs.’

For easy read see here.

People with disabilities should have the same right to choose how they live and with whom as mainstream Australians. 

The NDIA have done an amazing  job in de-institutionalising Australia with closing the large institutions within the first couple of years of the Scheme (why they don’t sing this from the rooftops every day, I don’t know, it’s an amazing achievement) but are undermining this progress by maintaining quasi-institutionalised living through forced share ratios and group homes. Senator Steele-John expressed this clearly at our National Forum – this is a transgression against the rights of people with disabilities, and a civil rights fight we have to have. 

At Tenant Voice, we will be focusing on this issue in 2026, so please join us and contribute to the conversations. If you are interested to find out more, please contact:

NSW – stacey@ypinh.org.au

QLD – tristram@ypinh.org.au

VIC – sijan@ypinh.org.au