Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA)
This information is based provided in the NDIS document “Specialist Accommodation” dated 30 September 2025.
Specialist Disability Accommodation, often shortened to SDA, is a type of NDIS home and living support for participants with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs. It’s housing designed with specialist features that may help a participant live more safely and independently, and may be suitable when other home and living supports don’t meet the participant’s disability-related needs.
SDA is only one type of home and living support.
Other home and living supports may include:
Supported Independent Living (SIL)
Individualised Living Options (ILO)
Medium Term Accommodation (MTA)
Personal care supports
Assistive technology
Home modifications
SDA is important to understand because it’s often confused with general housing, rent, daily support, or personal care. SDA is about the specialist housing itself, not the day-to-day supports you may receive while living there.
What is Specialist Disability Accommodation?
Specialist Disability Accommodation is a range of housing designed for people who need specialist housing because of extreme functional impairment or very high disability-related support needs. SDA is designed to be more accessible based on the your disability needs and to help support other supports be delivered more effectively and/or safely.
SDA properties may include features such as wide doorways, wheelchair accessible kitchen sinks, ceiling hoists, backup power supply, home automation, strong and durable building materials, improved visibility, or button-operated doors. The exact features depend on your needs and the SDA design category.
SDA can be delivered through different building types, including:
Apartments
Duplexes
Villas
Townhouses
Houses
Home groups
The right building type depends on your support needs, preferences, safety, goals, and how your other supports will work in that home. Other supports, such as SIL or personal care, are funded separately if they meet the NDIS funding criteria and are included in your plan.
What’s Not Included in Specialist Disability Accommodation?
SDA doesn’t include personal supports or services that a participant may receive in the home. For example, SDA doesn’t include personal care, Supported Independent Living (SIL), Individualised Living Options (ILO), or assistive technology.
This means SDA funding pays the SDA provider for the specialist housing. Other supports, such as SIL or personal care, are funded separately if they meet the NDIS funding criteria and are included in your plan.
The NDIS generally doesn’t fund housing outside SDA. Most participants access housing by owning or renting privately, living with family, or through social and community housing. State and territory housing and homelessness systems may be responsible where a person needs affordable housing or is at risk of homelessness.
What Specialist Disability Accommodation is For?
SDA is intended to help eligible participants live more independently and allow other supports to be delivered more safely or effectively. For example, a participant may need reinforced ceilings so a ceiling hoist can be installed and used safely.
When the NDIA considers SDA, it looks at how the housing will work with your other supports and whether SDA meets the NDIS funding criteria. This includes whether SDA meets the NDIS funding criteria. This includes whether SDA helps the participant pursue their goals, is effective and beneficial, is value for money, is an NDIS support for the participant, and is not likely to cause harm.
SDA may also help reduce future support needs, improve or maintain functional capacity, create safer environments, and strengthen your connection with family, community, health services, education or employment.
Specialist Disability Accommodation Categories
There are 4 SDA design categories for participants who are new to SDA:\
Improved Liveability
Fully Accessible
Robust
High Physical Support
These different categories describe the way the dwelling is designed to meet different disability support needs.
Improved Liveability
Improved Liveability housing has better physical access and features that may support people with sensory, intellectual, or cognitive impairments. Examples may include clearer lines of sight, improved visibility between walls and doors, and layouts that help support workers observe and respond more easily.
Fully Accessible
Fully Accessible housing has a high level of physical access for people with significant physical challenges. This category may suit participants who use a manual or powered wheelchair at home, cannot use steps, or need more space to move safely through the dwelling.
Robust
Robust housing is built to be strong, safe, and durable, reducing the need for repairs and maintenance. This category may suit participants who need help managing complex or challenging behaviours where the home environment needs to reduce risks to the participant and other people.
High Physical Support
High Physical Support housing includes a high level of physical access for people who need very high levels of support. It may include features such as ceiling hoists, backup power supply, home automation, communication technology, and other design elements that support complex physical support needs.
Working Out the Right SDA Category
The NDIA looks at your individual needs when working out which SDA design category is suitable. This includes considering how the features of the design category will make your other supports easier to access or use, and whether the design category supports health and safety.
The NDIA may look at allied health reports, home and living assessments, daily support needs, your goals, space requirements, care needs, support model, and whether your needs are likely to change in the near future.
A design category isn’t suitable if it makes other supports harder to deliver and creates risks to your health and safety. The NDIA considers how all supports work together, rather than looking at the dwelling in isolation.
Specialist Disability Accommodation Building Types
SDA may be provided through different building types. The four main building types for participant’s new to SDA are:
Apartments
Duplexes, Villas & Townhouses
Houses
Group Homes
Apartments are self-contained units that are part of a larger residential building. Duplexes, villas and townhouses are separate but semi-attached properties within a single land title or strata titled area, including stand-alone villas or granny flats.
Houses are detached low-rise buildings with garden or courtyard areas. Group homes are houses with 4 or 5 residents, and may suit participants who benefit from shared support arrangements or a smaller shared living environment.
When deciding the right building type, the NDIA considers your needs, what home and living supports you need, how many people you want to live with, what type of home you prefer, risks to you or to others, informal supports, community connection, and whether the building type is likely to improve outcomes.
Living Alone
Some participants may prefer to live alone, while others may need to live alone to reduce risks or because of their specific support needs. If living alone is being considered, the NDIA still needs to decide whether the SDA and any related supports meet the NDIS funding criteria.
One option may be living alone with onsite shared support. This may involve a group of participants each having their own home on the same site and sharing onsite support for a limited number of hours per day, with other planned NDIS supports also in place.
When considering onsite shared support, the NDIA looks at whether you can use technology to call for assistance, whether you need up to an average of 2.5 hours of unplanned person-to-person support per day, whether you can usually wait up to 60 minutes for unplanned support without a safety risk, and whether you understand the risks of living alone.
Living with Other People
You can choose who you live with, subject to the SDA provider agreeing and the arrangement not creating a risk to your health or safety. This may include living with family members, a partner, friends, another SDA-eligible participant, or another person who isn’t eligible for SDA.
The NDIS can only provide SDA funding for people who are NDSI participants and eligible for SDA. If another person lives with you and isn’t SDA-eligible, that person is responsible for their own costs, including rent.
You can choose to share a bedroom with another person, but the NDIA may need to consider whether this creates a risk, whether you are being asked to share when you don’t want to, and whether the dwelling can accommodate the extra person safely.
Specialist Disability Accommodation & Location
The NDIA generally includes an SDA location in your plan based on where you say you would like to live. The NDIA also considers whether the location works for your other supports and meets NDIS funding criteria.
When deciding an SDA location, the NDIA may consider where you want to live, where you live now and have lived before, access to community and mainstream services, connection to community or culture, and whether the location helps you stay connected with informal supports such as family and friends.
Location can also be part of value for money. For example, living close to family or friends may reduce the need for other NDIS supports if informal supports can continue safely and sustainably.
Who May Be Eligible?
SDA is for participants with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs. The NDIA considers whether the participant meets this requirement, whether they have an SDA needs requirement, and whether SDA meets the NDIS funding criteria for them.
Extreme functional impairment means the participant has a lot of difficulty completing daily tasks on their own, or sometimes can’t complete them at all, even with assistive technology or home modifications. These tasks may include mobility, personal care, and self-management.
Very high support needs means the participant needs significant person-to-person support for a large part of the day, needs support nearby or immediately available, and has support needs that can’t be safely or sustainably met by informal supports alone.
A participant may also have very high support needs where SDA will reduce safety risks for them or others, or where they have lived in a specialist setting for a long time and moving to other housing options would be difficult.
SDA & Other Supports
SDA is designed to work with other NDIS supports, not replace them. A participant living in SDA may also have supports such as SIL, ILO, personal care, support coordination, assistive technology, or behaviour supports funded separately in other parts of their plan.
The NDIA considers how SDA will work with your other disability-related supports. For example, the number of people living in the home, whether supports are shared, whether support is immediately available, and whether assistive technology can be used in the home may all affect the SDA decision.
You don’t generally need to use the same provider for SDA and their other supports. The SDA provider provides the home, while other providers may deliver supports such as SIL, ILO, personal care, or support coordination.
The SDA provider must allow you to change providers for your other NDIS supports. This separation is important because it supports choice and control over the supports a participant receives while living in SDA.
Finding Specialist Disability Accommodation
Participants with SDA funding can use the SDA finder to search for vacancies. The SDA finder allows you to search by location, building type, SDA design category, number of residents, price, and other details.
You may also find SDA through a support coordinator, recovery coach, local area coordinator (LAC), friends and family, online housing resources, SDA providers, or the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission provider register.
When speaking with providers, you should tell them the SDA design category, building type, and location included in your plan. This helps providers understand whether their vacancy matches your approved SDA funding.
If the SDA type in the your plan isn’t available yet, you can speak with your support coordinator or LAC about other options. They may be able to use other supports in the short term, consider temporary arrangements, or ask the NDIA to reassess the plan if their support needs have changed.
Specialist Disability Accommodation Budget & Pricing
If you are eligible for SDA, your plan will include details of your SDA budget. The SDA budget is the maximum amount the NDIS will pay for the SDA support, based on the type of SDA included in your plan.
The NDIA uses the SDA Pricing Arrangements to work out SDA funding. The pricing arrangements set out maximum prices for SDA based on factors such as design category, building type, location, and dwelling features.
SDA funding is paid to the registered SDA provider when the participant lives in the enrolled dwelling. You can choose the registered SDA provider you want, unless your plan says they need to use a particular provider. If you choose to live in a lower value SDA property than what is in your plan, the provider can only claim the value of the property. If a provider allows a participant to live in a higher-cost SDA property, the NDIS will still only fund the SDA amount set out in the plan, and any extra rent arrangement needs to be discussed with the SDA provider.
Service Agreements, Rent & Bills
Participants must have a written service agreement with their SDA provider. The service agreement should explain the roles and responsibilities of both you and the provider, including the SDA support, rental contribution, and relevant tenancy or occupancy details.
Participants living in SDA still pay rent and ordinary living costs. This may include a reasonable rent contribution and day-to-day expenses such as electricity, utilities, food, and personal costs.
The maximum reasonable rent contribution is generally 25% of the Commonwealth Disability Support Pension, 25% of the Pension Supplement, and any Commonwealth Rent Assistance you may receive. This amount should be included in the SDA service agreement or a separate rental agreement.
Plan Reassessments & SDA
If SDA is working well and your disability support needs haven’t changed significantly, you should not need to prove you still meet the SDA criteria at every plan reassessment.
If your support needs change significantly, you may need a different SDA category, building type, or location. The NDIA should discuss any SDA support changes with you and consider a reasonable timeframe for transition.
If you aren’t eligible for SDA, other home and living supports may still be suitable. These may include home modifications, assistive technology, personal care supports, SIL, ILO, or other supports that better match your individual needs.
Provider Enrolment & Compliance
Providers must apply to enrol SDA dwellings through the my NDIS provider portal. For newly built SDA, providers must also provide a Design Standard certificate of compliance signed by an accredited SDA assessor who is independently from the provider.
The NDIA usually processes complete and correct dwelling enrolment applications within 28 days. The NDIA may take longer where the application is complex or incomplete, and it’s not responsible for delays caused by incorrect or incomplete applications.
The NDIA may refuse to enrol a dwelling if the provider or dwelling doesn’t meet SDA enrolment requirements, including the SDA Design Standard, minimum requirements, density restrictions, or relevant SDA rules.
SDA providers must meet conditions of enrolment, including keeping the swelling in good repair, telling the NDIA about changes that affect suitability, and providing independent certification if requested.
The NDIA may cancel a dwelling’s enrolment if conditions are breached, such as if the dwelling isn’t maintained, false, or misleading information was provided, reasonable requests for information are refused, required certification isn’t provided, or the providers fails to notify the NDIA of relevant changes.
Find out more about enrolling a home as Specialist Disability Accommodation
Find out more about providing Specialist Disability Accommodation
Specialist Disability Accommodation is a highly specific NDIS home and living support for participants with extreme functional impairment or very high support needs. It funds the specialist housing itself, not the daily supports delivered inside the home, and it must work alongside your other NDIS, informal, community, and mainstream supports.
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