Homelessness and Disability

Homelessness Australiawww.homelessnessaustralia.org.au

Homelessness Australia

@HomelessnessAus

There are four million people in Australia with a disabilityi. A disability is any condition that restricts, limits or impairs a person’s mental, sensory or physical functions. Disabilities can be caused by accident, trauma, genetics or disease. A disability may be temporary or permanent, total or partial, lifelong or acquired, visible or invisible.

People living with disabilities can face additional costs on top of their basic costs of living. These costs can range from modifications of existing housing (and lack of options in the housing market), the need to purchase personal care and accommodation support services and additional health care costs.

Homelessness and Disability

Homelessness Australia Jan 2016

People with disability living in povertyIn addition to research showing that peo-ple with disability are more likely to be at risk of homelessness, research has found that more than one in four Australians with a disability live below the poverty linevi. 27.4% of people with disability are currently living below the conservative, internationally accepted poverty line of less than 50% of median equivalised disposable incomevii. The research found that overall, 12.8% of Australians were living in poverty. This suggests that people with disability are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as other Australians.

While there is an urgent need to reduce poverty amongst all groups in Australia it does not reflect well upon us as a nation that such high rates of people with disability are living in poverty. Improving the supply of affordable housing that is accessible and conforms to the principles of universal housing design would be a significant positive step towards reducing rates of poverty and providing increased opportunities for economic and social inclusion by people with disability.

Referencesi ABS, 2009, Disability Australia

ii University of Adelaide, 2001, Address-ing homelessness amongst persons with a disability: Identifying and enacting best practice

iii Miloon Kothari, 2005, Women and adequate housing, Study by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living

iv WWDA, 2008, Shut Out, Hung Out, Left Out, Missing Out - Women With Disabili-ties Australia (WWDA) Submission in Response to the Australian Govern-ment’s Green Paper on Homelessness

v WWDA, 2004, Unjustified Hardship - homelessness and women with disabil-ities

vi ACOSS, 2013, Poverty and Disability report

vii ACOSS, 2013, ibid.

People with disabilities make up about 18% of the general populationa, but about 25% of the clientsb of specialist homeless services.

a ABS, 2011, Disability Australia 2009b AIHW, 2005, Homeless SAAP clients with a disability

People with disabilities can face barriers in accessing homelessness services. Some issues include: not being aware services exist and not knowing how to reach services or how accessible they are. Information on services is usually avail-able in printed format – meaning people with vision impairment may be unable to access it. The lack of Telephone Typewrit-er (TTY) services in domestic violence and outreach services may mean that women with a hearing impairment only have the option of using a relay service.

People with disabilities also face restrictions in relation to their physical environment and access to personal care. Many services may have disability access but not all facilities are accessible.

People with disabilities may be unable to manage daily personal tasks such as cooking and washing and some services may not be able to accept people who require help with personal care.

Women with disabilitiesWomen with disabilities face significant-ly more difficulties in getting adequate housing, health, education, training and employment, and are more likely to be institutionalizediii.

Women with disabilities are over-repre-sented in the main factors that increase the risk of homelessness, including: lack of affordable, secure housing; unemploy-ment & inadequate income; and domestic and family violenceiv.

The following issues contribute directly to the homelessness of women with disabilities or construct an environment in which the risk of homelessness be-comes an aspect of the daily life of many women with disabilities:

� Additional costs of living with a disability.

� Discrimination. � Safety/location. � Deinstitutionalisation. � Lack of accurate datav.

Housing for people with disabilitiesThere is a need for more research into the housing pathways of people with dis-abilities. In recent years, there has been a move towards ensuring that new build

properties in the social housing sector conform to the principles of universal design to enable people to stay in them for the duration of their life, including ensuring that they are accessible for people with disabilities and adaptable as needed.

The majority of houses however are nei-ther accessible nor adaptable to house people with physical disabilities and this presents a problem, especially in light of the establishment of the National Dis-ability Insurance Scheme (DisabilityCare Australia) that seeks to provide people with profound and severe disabilities with greater choice and individualised funding packages to facilitate indepen-dent living opportunities.

It is difficult to ascertain the exact prevalence of disability amongst people experiencing homelessness. Homeless-ness Australia’s member services report that a reasonable proportion of people who present seeking assistance may have some level of impaired functioning resulting from either an acquired brain injury or because of a mild or moderate intellectual disability.

More information is needed about the housing experiences of people with disabilities, especially those who fall out of housing and seek assistance from specialist homelessness services. We also need better data to capture the level of housing need amongst people with disabilities in Australia.

Homelessness and Disability Homelessness and Disability

Homelessness and disabilityPeople with disabilities have a right to expect good quality care and access to accessible housing that is affordable, safe and secure and meets their needs. Persons with a disability are vulnera-ble both to, and within, homelessness because they may have lower incomes and are more likely to be unemployed and have limited housing options.

Research suggests that persons with a disability have a greater exposure to the risk of homelessness than the general populationii. Until recently there has been a lack of information about the relationship between homelessness and disability or the incidence and prevalence of homelessness amongst people with disabilities. The main information we did have related to forms of dementia amongst older people experiencing homelessness and acquired brain injury typically amongst older males presenting to homelessness services after lengthy histories of trauma and abuse or long-term alcohol use.

Homelessness services have reported anecdotally that some clients with mod-erate intellectual disabilities may have been mistakenly barred from services for ‘acting out’ or not conforming to ‘service rules’. There is now an acknowledgement that a number of people within this group may in fact have an intellectual disability.