The Relative Risk of Homelessness among Persons with a Disability: New Methods and Policy Insights

This paper reports on the first phase of an ambitious program of research that seeks to both understand the risk of homelessness amongst persons with a disability in Australia and shed light on the impact of a significant policy reform—the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)—in changing the level of homelessness risk. This first paper, reports on the level of homelessness risk for persons with a disability prior to the introduction of the NDIS, with a subsequent paper providing updated data and analysis for the period post the implementation of the NDIS. In one sense, this paper provides the ‘base’ condition prior to the introduction of the NDIS but also serves a far broader role in advancing our understanding of how disability and chronic ill-health affects the risk of homelessness. Our research finds that in the period prior to the introduction of the NDIS, a large proportion of people with disabilities were at risk of homelessness, but those whose disabilities affected their schooling or employment were at the greatest risk.