If you’re exploring shared living, you’ve probably come across terms like SDA, SIL and ILO. Understanding what each one means can feel confusing at first, especially when they’re often explained separately.
Shared living is a living arrangement where you share a home with one or more other people, and in some cases, share certain supports as well. Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA), Supported Independent Living (SIL) and Individualised Living Options (ILO) are different types of support funded by the NDIS that can help make your living arrangement possible. While they’re often mentioned together, they each play a different role in helping you live as independently as possible.
In this guide, we’ll explain how shared living and supports fit together, why keeping housing and support separate is important and how decisions about shared supports are made. If you’re just starting your research, our complete guide to shared living is a great place to begin.
Shared living describes the way you live, not how your supports are funded.
Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) is the physical home itself. Think of it as the walls, the layout, the ceiling hoist, the wide doorways and the space you live in.
Supported Independent Living (SIL) or in some cases, Individualised Living Options (ILO), is the support that helps you live as independently as possible. It covers the people who help you day to day, with things like personal care, cooking, getting to appointments and building daily living skills.
So shared living is the setting. SDA is the home inside that setting. SIL or ILO is the support that happens inside that home.
If you want the pure funding definitions side by side, our guide to the difference between SIL and SDA lays that out. This article is about how they actually work together once you are living somewhere.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to shared living. The funding included in your NDIS plan is based on your individual needs and the support you require to live as independently as possible.
You might have SDA funding because you need a purpose-built, accessible home. You might have SIL or ILO funding because you need support to live day to day. Many people in shared living have both, working together.
If you are working out whether you qualify for a shared setting in the first place, our guide to shared living eligibility explains how the NDIA makes that decision.
One of the principles that sets Enliven Housing apart is that we believe your home and your support should remain separate.
This gives you greater choice and flexibility over who provides your supports while helping ensure your housing isn’t tied to a single support provider.
Keeping housing and support separate also creates clearer accountability. As your housing provider, we focus on providing a great home and tenancy experience. Your support provider focuses on delivering the support that’s right for you.
If your support needs change over time, you have greater freedom to explore different support options without automatically needing to move home.
You can read more about why we separate housing from support in our model.
In a shared home, some supports are often shared between housemates, particularly things like overnight support. That raises an obvious question. If support is shared, who decides how it works? Who chooses the provider? Who decides what good support looks like?
In older models, the provider decided. You lived with whatever arrangement was set up and you had little say. That is exactly the dynamic modern shared living is designed to move away from.
At Enliven Housing, this is where the Choice Collective comes in. The Choice Collective is a group made up of the tenants who share supports in a home or community. Together, they make the decisions about their shared support: what is shared, how it is delivered and who delivers it.
It is independently facilitated through Enliven Community, which is a separate organisation to Enliven Housing. That independence is deliberate and important. Because the Facilitator does not work for the housing provider or the support provider, tenants can speak freely, raise concerns and give honest feedback without worrying about the consequences.
The result is that shared supports are shaped by the tenants and their housemates, not decided for them. And it is not a one-time setup. The Choice Collective can request changes to how their shared support is delivered at any time. If something is not working, it can be raised and changed. You can learn more about how the Choice Collective works.
It helps to see how the pieces fit in real life.
Imagine a shared home with two housemates. The home itself is a purpose-built, accessible property, funded through SDA and managed by a housing provider like Enliven. Both housemates have their own private bedroom and share the kitchen, living and outdoor spaces.
Inside that home, each housemate has support funded through their own NDIS plan. They share overnight support between them, which makes their funding go further, while keeping their own individual daytime supports tailored to their goals.
Decisions about that shared overnight support are made together, through the Choice Collective, with an Independent Facilitator helping them agree on what they want and how it should work. If one housemate is unhappy with the support provider, the Collective can review it and if needed, request a change.
The home stays the same. The support can flex. And because the housing and the support come from different places, no single provider holds all the power. That is shared living working the way it should.
One of the great things about shared living is that everyone’s support can be tailored to their individual needs. That
If you have been searching for a disability group home, you have probably noticed the term pops up everywhere, often
For a lot of people, this is the question that matters most about shared living. Not the funding, not the
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