Australia is building more disability housing. The question is whether it reaches the right people

New disability housing is going up across Australia. Six-storey social housing blocks. Towers with disability hubs built in. Apartment complexes designed for disabled and older residents together.

After years of warnings about a shortage of suitable homes, that’s a real change. The harder question is whether any of it reaches the people who need it most.

What’s being built

Disability housing announcements are coming thick and fast. A church charity recently revealed plans for a six-storey social and disability housing development. A former milk factory site is being put forward for a multigenerational tower with a hotel, apartments and a disability hub. Social housing apartments for disabled and older tenants are under construction, and newly approved disability living towers will add thousands of residents to inner-city areas.

Developers are now treating accessible design as a selling point, promoting buildings that mix older, younger and disabled residents. That’s a change from the era of group homes tucked away on the suburban fringe. Good accessible design helps everyone in a building, not only the people who strictly need it.

The demand behind it

The need is real and long-standing. Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) is the NDIS-funded housing stream for participants with the most complex support needs. It was designed to serve about 6 per cent of NDIS participants, roughly 30,000 people with the highest care requirements.

Supply has not kept up, and the picture varies a lot by region. The latest quarterly NDIS data shows demand rising while the construction pipeline in some markets slows. Some areas have a genuine shortfall of suitable homes. Others risk oversupply.

Matching a person to a home is not as simple as finding a vacancy. The dwelling has to suit their design category, their support model and often compatible housemates. A new apartment in the wrong location or the wrong layout helps no one. Building more is necessary. Building the right homes in the right places is what counts.

Moving people out of group homes

For years, advocates have pushed to move people out of group homes and into housing that supports independence, privacy and choice.

The Summer Foundation, a philanthropically funded body that researches and demonstrates new housing models, uses a “10+1” approach: 10 accessible apartments inside a larger mainstream development, plus one extra unit for 24-hour on-call support. Residents use smart-home technology to operate lighting, doors, heating and support calls from a phone or tablet, so they keep their independence with help close by. The Foundation’s case is that well-located, well-designed homes with the right technology raise quality of life and independence and reduce lifetime care costs.

The difference in people’s lives can be large. The Foundation points to residents like Bruce, who spent more than 30 years in a group home before moving into a home of his own. He has said he met more people in his first 2 years living independently than in the previous 34 years combined.

Individualised Living Arrangements (ILAs) go further. A person with disability might live with a chosen housemate or in a host arrangement, starting from how they want to live. The Foundation’s modelling suggests scaling these up could save the NDIS around $260 million over 5 years if 500 more people each year were supported into ILAs instead of group homes.

The gaps a building boom won’t close

Serious gaps remain.

The first is geography. Much of the new development sits in metropolitan and inner-city areas. People in regional and remote areas still face thin supply, fewer providers and workforce shortages. A tower in a capital city does little for someone waiting for a home in a regional town.

The second is support. The design of disability housing has moved faster than the way support is delivered inside those homes. Without flexible, well-trained, tenant-centred support, even a well-designed apartment can leave residents feeling they have little say.

The third is policy. There’s a real risk this opportunity is wasted if pricing, data and approval processes don’t direct investment toward the homes and locations of genuine need, and don’t clear the way for more contemporary, person-centred options.

Co-design is the difference

The clearest lesson from the projects that work is that people with disability are in the room from the start. Co-design, where future residents shape the housing rather than just receive it, keeps coming up as the difference between housing that looks good in a render and housing that works in a real life.

The construction is a sign that disability housing is being taken seriously, as both a social good and an investment. Whether it delivers what people actually want, real choice about where they live, who they live with and how they’re supported, depends on what happens long after the building is finished.