Every Australian Counts puts housing on the national agenda
Last Friday disability ministers from around Australia met to discuss the next steps in the roll out of the NDIS. A commitment to set up pilot programs for innovative accessible housing was one of the positive outcomes.
This is thanks to all the Every Australian Counts supporters, who helped to make sure housing was a top priority for ministers at the meeting after they were presented with our housing action plan, A Place I Can Proudly Call Home
In their communiqué following the meeting, the ministers agreed to start working on innovative accommodation pilots in the NDIS trial sites. This was one of the key demands in our housing paper.
In addition, Minister Ajaka, the NSW Disability Minister is the first state minister to agree to meet with Every Australian Counts supporters to hear some of their housing challenges first hand. Thank you for your support Minister! We’re looking forward to other state and territory ministers following his lead.
All this is great news and long awaited action on one of the key issues for the NDIS – access to appropriate disability housing.
You can read about what else happened at the ministers meeting here.
While we congratulate the ministers on this first step, there remains three key questions we still need answered:
- The ministers made it clear that NDIS funding will be used to support existing specialist disability accommodation, and to build new and innovative disability housing. We need more detail on how this will be achieved including targets, timelines and guaranteed funding allocations.
- The ministers committed to housing pilots in the NDIS trial sites. However we still need to find out where these will be, when they will begin, and most importantly, what governments are hoping to learn from them before the NDIS is rolled out nationally.
- Our report highlighted that people with disability want to live in the community, in their own homes. We need to know how each government will prioritise access to affordable social housing for people with disability.
We hope to ask all the state and territory ministers these questions when they agree to meet with us over the next few weeks.
In the meantime keep sharing the Every Australian Counts housing action plan – on Facebook, Twitter and email. We’ve set up some easy share buttons on the housing plan page.
Read the full communiqué from the COAG Disability Reform Council meeting.
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