HOUSING AND DISABILITY – 2016 election platform
HOUSING
Priorities from People With Disabilities ACT for the 2016 ACT Election
Who are we?
People With Disabilities ACT (PWD ACT) is an organisation for people with disabilities managed by people with disabilities. We represent, promote and support the interests of people with disabilities. We work to bring about an inclusive society by:
▪ Advocating for the removal of all attitudinal, physical and social barriers which prevent our full participation in community life here in Canberra;
▪ Advocating for policies, programs and practices which support people with disabilities to have the best life possible; and
▪ Collaborating with other ACT and national disability advocacy organisations to improve outcomes for people with disabilities.
What is the evidence?
· There is a shortage of accessible housing for people with disabilities in the open market and in private rental despite us being a trial site for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
· People with disability are more likely to be on low and casualised incomes or on income support and we know from the Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot that there are only a handful of private rentals in Canberra which can be afforded by someone on the Disability Support Pension.
· There is a lack of accessible housing in the ACT which means people have fewer housing choices. An undersupply of visitable housing can also leave people isolated – visiting friends or neighbours can be a challenge.
· The overheated Saturday rental auction market means its difficult for people with disability to compete, negotiate and identify access modifications.
· There will always be a need in the foreseeable future for dedicated public and social housing supply solutions for people with a disability.
· The Productivity Commission's annual Report on Government Services (ROGS) has shown there were 2,320 Canberrans on the waiting list for public housing in 2015. This is up on the previous year and 700 higher than in 2011. At the same time, the total number of public housing dwellings is falling, from more than 11,000 in 2011 to 10,800 last year.
· The ROGS Report also found that people with “special needs” have very few housing options beyond public housing and community housing - there is significant housing market failure for these residents in Canberra
· People with disability around Australia report widespread rental discrimination
· There is a lack of good work on this, however all the research we have indicates that the housing careers of people with a disability are flatter and more restricted than those of the population overall.
· There is a history across Australia of people with disability having limited housing choices and being directed towards housing models that segregate, exclude, isolate and expose people with disability to abuse and neglect.
· The ACT does not have large boarding houses or disability institutions but it does have large group homes as well as new housing “models” under construction such as centre based respite and Project Independence. Also, the roll out of the NDIS in Canberra is revealing a trend for large numbers of group homes to be operated by single providers pointing to the need for measures to ensure diversity and choice of providers for people with disabilities.
· The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse and neglect and the Senate Inquiry into Disability Abuse have heard about the vulnerability of people with disability to abuse in institutions.
· A significant inquiry in 2003, headed by Justice Gallop, following deaths in care, found grave problems inside congregate settings in the ACT and recommended the “adoption of a policy of progressively withdrawing from the group home model as the predominant residential support arrangement, moving towards an individualised and integrated care and support model” and “investment in support and assistance for families of people with disabilities because best practice requires that the individual should be supported in the context of their own family and the wider community”.
· Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disability provides that States Parties to the Convention recognize the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community, with choices equal to others, and 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
· The ACT has been generally moving in a CRPD compliant direction, however it has begun funding and promoting some models which are inconsistent with Article 19 and which are of concern to PWD ACT. These include Project Independence and two large respite centres in conjunction with the Ricky Stuart Foundation.
· The last census in 2011 reported a 70 per cent rise in homelessness in Canberra. 1,785 Canberrans were experiencing homelessness in Canberra on Census night 2011 (Australian Bureau of Statistics). People with disability are especially vulnerable to homelessness due to a range of issues including being twice as likely as other Australians to live in poverty.
· Our planning for Universal Design is failing. Community and housing industry leaders agreed with the federal government a voluntary national guideline and a plan to provide basic access features in all new housing by 2020. Governments at all levels endorsed this agreement through their housing, aged and disability policies. This includes COAG’s 2010 - 2020 National Disability Strategy. A 2015 review of the agreement indicated that the voluntary approach has failed. It estimated that, without intervention, less than 5% of the agreed 2020 target would be achieved.
· The ACT is growing with new suburbs such as Forde – we have an opportunity to do better.
What are the issues?
Our current priorities include: an access campaign; a Budget submission; the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the ACT; transport issues (especially taxi’s and ride sharing); housing; and lobbying to ensure disability is a priority in the coming ACT and Federal elections.
The priorities you are reading followed months of consultation with people with disabilities across 2015. We have been working across 2016 to make candidates aware of them. There is much to do but we welcome any areas where parties or government have now made commitments or met them.
What do we want?
We invite voters and candidates to consider the following strategies for addressing the housing disadvantage faced by people with disability:
1. Increase the supply of affordable and accessible housing for people with disability
The issues
All the evidence suggests people with disability are over-represented in the ACT population experiencing housing stress, housing poverty and homelessness. Average rents in the ACT fall into the $470 per week range and our median house prices are around $625,092 according to Domain for the September 2016 Quarter. The ACT’s population is set to reach 400,000 in 2016 with ageing being a major driver as more people retire in Canberra. Ageing is also a major cause of disability. Despite this, the provision of accessible, adaptable and universal design housing is a major point of market failure in Canberra and nationally.
What we want:
We want candidates in this election to commit to
· Mandated housing to the Liveable Housing Design Guidelines
· Invest in and incentivise non government investors to fund accessible housing construction with a focus on private rental
· Support the inclusion of accessible and adaptable housing standards within the Building Code of Australia at the National Level through COAG mechanisms
· Address rental discrimination against people with disability by community education and promotion with private real estate agents and industry through investment in initiatives like InvolveCBR – the ACT’s commitment to the National Disability Strategy (NDS)
· Prioritise the rollout of accessible and visitable housing within all new public and social housing developments
In parallel PWD ACT endorses the strategies outlined by the ACT Council for Social Services as part of their My Vote For Housing campaign initiative.
2. Ensure mainstream housing and homelessness programs are available and responsive to people with disability
The issues:
The reality of systemic barriers to employment, insecure incomes, the lack of wealth accumulation and discrimination in the marketplace means that public and community housing will always be a part of the housing mix for people with disability in the foreseeable future. These services need adequate funding and support.
Some mainstream housing and homelessness services are inaccessible. For instance, to our knowledge, there isn’t a single women’s shelter in the ACT which provides crisis housing at the liveable housing standard.
What we want:
We want candidates in this election to commit to
· Maintain funding for public and social housing for people with disability
· Maintain funding for specialist housing and homelessness services
· Dedicated funding and contract requirements for disability access within specialist homelessness intake services in the ACT including a stocktake of these services for disability access. There should be at least one women’s shelter in the ACT that fully complies with disability access at the Liveable Housing Standard for access and visitability within the life of this Assembly.
3. End funding of institutional living arrangements
The issues:
The response to the housing crisis for people with disabilities is often framed in terms of quick fix housing “models” which support relatively few people to gain independent housing in the community. They create perverse outcomes by moving people into segregated settings away from natural supports, advocacy and inclusion in the community.
The ACT does not have a history of large institutions but we have had a succession of negative outcomes within large group homes. Failings in these “models” were highlighted by the Gallop Report in 2003.
Sadly, the ACT Government has begun supporting some housing which is inconsistent with our promise as a human rights jurisdiction – especially Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disability – namely: models which require people to live in a particular living arrangement in order to receive disability supports.
What we want:
We want candidates in this election to commit to
· Prohibit further funding which is directed at maintaining or developing institutional living arrangements for people with disability;
· Initiate a program of action to devolve people with disability from institutions, centre based respite and large group homes in the ACT
Take measures to ensure that there a sufficient number of providers of supported accommodation services for people with disabilities in the ACT providing a diversity of services to ensure that people with disabilities have real choice in their housing options.
Contacts
Robert Altamore, Executive Officer, PWD ACT, ph (02) 6286 4223
Craig Wallace, Campaign Manager, PWD ACT
Find out more via www.pwdact.org.au and follow us via @pwdact2 or on Facebook
Authorised by Craig Wallace for People With Disabilities ACT Inc. | PO Box 717 Mawson ACT 2607
Ph: 02 6286 4223 | Fax: 02 6286 4475 | | www.pwdact.org.au
PWD ACT is provided with the assistance of the ACT Government through the Community Services Directorate