Paul works as a casual employee with the Summer Foundation and helped design this new newsletter. He shares a bit about his housing journey.
Hello, my name is Paul. My current life interests include reading and self-development, experiencing nature, experiencing the urban environment, socialising with family and friends and going on pushes in my manual chair.
I live with C5/6 complete quadriplegia that resulted from an accident I suffered back on 17 April 1998. I live in a one-bedroom High Physical Support Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) apartment.
My housing journey as a person with disability has included a huge spectrum of living situations, beginning with living at the house belonging to my Mum, with my siblings after being discharged from the Royal Talbot. After finishing school, I moved to Melbourne and had 4 years living on campus at Menzies College.
With my education finished, housing became a big problem. There were no choices in the private housing market. And even if there were, it’d be hard to make it work financially, as at this time I didn’t yet have a job (and the income that comes with it).
Do I have to move home? Where else is there for me to go?
Luckily for me, a room in a disability related community housing provider (CHP) came up, where I spent 8 months living. And, luckily for me again, I got accepted for social housing (from the then Department of Housing).
But my choices with both were extremely limited. I had no choice with the CHP. The room with the CHP was in Newport, which meant a move across Melbourne. My choice with social housing was Melbourne north/west or Melbourne south/east. I chose the former and landed a unit in Reservoir. Living alone in both CHP and social housing also meant accepting being alone overnight. I had no funding for support overnight. That was the risk I had to accept pre-NDIS to live independently.
But luck was on my side again. Mum made the huge call to mortgage herself further so that she could buy a small, well located apartment that would much better support my ability to live a full life. What a legend! And it worked. The apartment Mum got for me massively amplified my social and economic participation in life. I got a full-time job in the Melbourne CBD, and have worked ever since.
As good as it was to be the recipient of such generous support from Mum, it still meant accepting pretty significant compromises. It didn’t resolve being alone overnight without support.
Then the NDIS came along and with it SDA. Then SDA literally came to my doorstep. I watched a new apartment development get built next door to the apartment I was living in. Like all things NDIS, the NDIA don’t necessarily make it clear all the supports that would be reasonable and/or necessary for you to receive. Once I learned about SDA, I knew I had to get it in my NDIS plan. A model of housing that meets the needs of my significant physical impairment, both from an access point of view and a support point of view (with the onsite support service), in a great location, where I have established myself in the community.
Living in SDA has been a game-changer. I finally have housing that meets the needs of my significant physical impairment. I finally have housing choice. I finally have housing security.
Living in SDA is why I put my hand up to contribute to this newsletter. I would love for more people with disability to experience more, better and safer living that comes with well located SDA.
So please continue to tune in. Let’s learn from each other as we continue to progress in life.
Together, we have got this!