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Recent reports about the financial pressures facing Supported Independent Living providers in Victoria highlight a challenge that extends well beyond any individual organisation.
More than 80 former Victorian Government disability homes have reportedly closed after government subsidies ended, raising questions about the long-term viability of some remaining services.
For people with disability, this isn’t simply an issue of provider funding or service delivery. It raises a much more fundamental question: what happens to my home if the organisation providing my daily supports can no longer support me there?
For Specialist Disability Accommodation providers, it is a question worth taking seriously.
SDA and Supported Independent Living (SIL) perform very different but complementary roles.
SDA provides the physical home for eligible NDIS participants with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs. SIL provides the assistance and supervision a participant may require to live there.
The two need to work together, but they do not need to come from the same organisation.
In fact, current NDIS Practice Standards reinforce the importance of separating tenancy and support arrangements so participants can make informed choices about where they live, who supports them and how those supports are delivered.
At DEC Housing, we have always believed that this separation is important.
We don’t provide SIL and don’t require our residents to use a nominated SIL provider. Participants can choose the support provider that works for them and, importantly, can change that provider without automatically putting their SDA tenancy at risk.
Recent events demonstrate why that matters.
The pressures currently facing parts of the SIL sector are significant.
The Melbourne Age recently reported that the viability of hundreds of Victorian disability homes has been affected by a gap between the cost of delivering services and available NDIS funding. Some services have closed and residents have since moved to alternative accommodation.
At the same time, SIL itself is undergoing significant reform. SIL provider registration is becoming mandatory, while the Australian Government is consulting on a possible commissioning approach for SIL participants who require 24/7 support, including how provider viability challenges might be addressed.
These changes may ultimately produce a stronger and more sustainable support market. But periods of reform can also create uncertainty.
That makes it increasingly important to distinguish between a problem with someone’s support arrangement and a problem with someone’s home.
They aren’t necessarily the same thing.
For many participants, an SDA property isn’t simply accommodation. It is their home.
It may have been chosen because of its location, accessibility, proximity to family or community, compatibility with housemates, or because it has been specifically designed around the participant.
Moving can therefore have consequences far beyond changing address.
The recent Victorian experience is instructive. Even where older disability homes face financial and operational challenges, residents have reportedly expressed a strong desire to remain because, understandably, they regard those properties as their homes.
Where possible, the sector should therefore be asking:
Can we change the supports around the person rather than moving the person to fit the supports?
Sometimes relocation will be the right outcome. But it shouldn’t automatically be the first one.
There is another lesson for SDA providers.
Finding an available SDA property that matches a participant’s funding category is only part of finding the right home.
Before a tenancy begins, there should also be a clear understanding of how the participant expects to be supported within it.
For example, is the proposed support model based on shared or individual support? How will supports work alongside those of another resident? What happens if circumstances change? And could another SIL provider realistically step in if the participant later chooses—or needs—to change providers?
These are primarily decisions for participants and their support teams. An SDA provider should not dictate how a participant uses their support funding.
But a good SDA provider should help facilitate those conversations early.
A housing option that works beautifully on paper but cannot accommodate a sustainable support arrangement may not deliver the long term security the participant is seeking.
There is also a broader responsibility for SDA providers.
Being independent of SIL doesn’t mean being disconnected from the SIL sector.
SDA providers should know the support organisations operating in the communities where they provide housing, build relationships across the sector and be willing to work with different providers chosen by participants.
This creates options.
If one provider withdraws from a market, changes its operating model or simply stops being the right fit for a participant, having several organisations capable of working within the home may help preserve the participant’s tenancy.
That is particularly important as SIL providers adjust to mandatory registration and the wider reforms now underway.
There is a lesson for the design of SDA as well.
The best SDA should not merely comply with the relevant design category on the day it is built. Wherever practical, it should provide flexibility for people’s circumstances to change.
Flexible living spaces, appropriate separation between resident and staff areas, well considered OOA accommodation, privacy between residents, accessible outdoor areas and layouts capable of supporting different models of assistance can all help a home remain suitable as circumstances evolve.
For DEC, this is one of the benefits of involving participants directly in the design of custom built homes.
The objective isn’t simply to construct an SDA compliant building. It is to create a home that can support someone’s life over the long term.
The NDIS and the disability housing and support markets will continue to change (as they have done since the Scheme started).
New support needs assessments are scheduled to begin as part of the new planning framework from April 2027, while SIL registration and possible commissioning represent significant changes to the way home and living supports are regulated and delivered.
SDA providers can’t control those changes.
What we can do is make sure the participant’s home is as resilient as possible to them.
That means maintaining a clear separation between housing and support, supporting participant choice, designing adaptable homes, working constructively with different SIL providers and planning for what happens when support arrangements change.
Because when a support provider changes, a participant shouldn’t necessarily have to change their address as well.
At DEC Housing, our focus is on providing SDA that offers Dignity, Empowerment and Choice and, wherever possible, the security of knowing that home can remain home.
