Housing assistance, social inclusion and people living with a disability: AHURI Final Report No. 178

On the whole, the research finds that housing assistance has a very substantial impact on the social inclusion of people with a disability in Australia. It has a number of positive impacts: (a) Housing assistance provides stability in the lives of people living with a disability who would otherwise be vulnerable to a range of negative circumstances and who may otherwise have no sense of control over their lives. (b) Housing assistance helps people with a disability deal with other crises in their lives—health, family relationships, monetary concerns et cetera—and adds to their resilience and independence. (c) Housing assistance reduces the exposure of people with a disability to very high housing costs and the risk of eviction. It reduces both vulnerability to homelessness and the experience of (recurrent) homelessness. In the absence of housing assistance, it is almost certain that significantly larger numbers of people living with a disability would experience homelessness, and its most acute manifestation—rough sleeping.
(d) Housing assistance makes it more likely that people with a disability will enter and remain in paid employment. This has social inclusion benefits both for the individual and broader society. (e) Housing assistance, in some instances, can help people with a disability find a voice within their community by equipping them with advocacy skills and providing stability in life, which in turn enables engagement with wider social institutions.