Support People, not Accommodation
The Queensland Parliament’s Community Support and Services Committee tabled its final report, Inquiry into the Provision and Regulation of Supported Accommodation in Queensland in June 2024. With the government response to the recommendations due on 7 September, this article outlines some of the outstanding issues needing to be addressed. Authors are Matilda Alexander, Sophie Wiggans and Eve Newton-Johnson, Queensland Advocacy for Inclusion (QAI)[i]
The current utilisation and regulation of supported accommodation in Queensland is causing serious concern to those who, like QAI, have long been campaigning for the deinstitutionalisation of people with disability. In theory, good quality hostels and boarding houses offer something unique to the accommodation sector. They can provide a useful short‑term accommodation option for people with and without disability. The reality, however, is that the initial wave of deinstitutionalisation failed to set up adequate community‑based supports for people being transitioned out of institutions. This, together with a housing market that is inaccessible and unaffordable, has meant that supported accommodation has become a long-term housing option for many people with disability who have nowhere else to live.
In late 2023, the Queensland government initiated an inquiry into the provision and regulation of supported accommodation in Queensland. To assist the inquiry, QAI was engaged by Queensland’s Department of Housing to support current and former residents of level three supported accommodation facilities to share their story. We spoke to over 200 people about what life was like for them and heard overwhelmingly that our mainstream and disability support systems are failing to meet people’s needs. Consequently, people with disability are continuing to reside in institutional environments that can lead to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, and which perpetuate harmful community attitudes and values regarding the lives and dignity of people with disability.
During our engagement with residents, we heard of:
· people being unable to leave their rooms
· people self-harming and being exposed to drugs and alcohol
· injuries and requests to call an ambulance that were ignored
· 30 people sharing three toilets and three showers
· a hot water system that had not worked for more than two years
· people having their access to money, phones and identification restricted
· people being hungry and feeling lonely and disconnected
While the Committee’s final report provides a comprehensive analysis of the many challenges facing the sector, its 12 high-level recommendations do not contain the blueprint for reform that is so desperately needed. The recommendations address only a limited number of issues and the scope of some of the recommendations is extremely vague.
In their current form, the recommendations will not address the structural causes of the concerns raised in the Public Advocate’s report, 'Safe, secure and affordable'? The need for an inquiry into supported accommodation in Queensland (the Public Advocate’s report).
For example, recommendation 5 of the Committee’s final report states the need for improvements to the accreditation process that, among other things, will “combat isolation and institutionalisation”. However, the report does not acknowledge the way in which supported accommodation facilities currently institutionalise people with disability, nor does it provide any guidance on how ending this could be achieved.
The final report also fails to address the power imbalance between residents and residential service providers. While it suggests improvements to the accreditation process that will “support residents and promote their right to exert choice and control” (recommendation 5), there are no meaningful recommendations to deliver upon this intention. For example, there is no recommendation to establish an independent body to represent the views of residents and there is no recommendation to empower residents by providing access to advocacy services.
There are also no recommendations to address the ways in which resident choice and control is currently restricted. For example, when supported accommodation providers force residents to access personal care services through their registered National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) business; or when providers double-dip from a resident’s Disability Support Pension and NDIS package when providing the same service; and when providers take almost all a resident’s disposable income, leaving them with very little money to spend on other basic needs such as medication or clothing.
In recommending funding for residential service providers to deliver both accommodation and personal care services, the Committee has also gone against recommendations from both the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and the Independent Review of the NDIS, both of which were part of the inquiry’s terms of reference.
The role of the Committee was to obtain the evidence and lived experience of people involved with the sector and to provide high-level recommendations for reform. It did this successfully. We now need the appropriate expertise to provide the detail required to operationalise these recommendations.
Ultimately, boarding houses and hostels are meant to be temporary accommodation options for people with and without disability. They should not be places where people with disability live in order to access support. We want a future of supported people, not accommodation.
[i] Queensland Advocacy for Inclusion is an independent, community‑based advocacy organisation and community legal service that provides individual and systems advocacy for people with disability.
Moderator: Dr Elroy Dearn, Research Fellow RMIT University