Group homes and supported accommodation: what changed in 2025

In September 2025 the NSW Government amended the housing planning policy for group homes. If you run supported accommodation, or you own a house that could become a group home, the changes matter.

What changed

• The definition no longer ties a group home to a single dwelling occupied as a single household, which opens the door to core-and-cluster arrangements with on-site support.
• Converting an existing house into a group home of up to ten bedrooms can now go through complying development with a twenty-day determination, where the standards are met.
• Some of the standards that used to kill conversions were relaxed: the landscaped area required behind the building line dropped from half the area to ten per cent, and the minimum width of private open space fell from four metres to three.
• An exempt pathway now allows some existing houses to operate as group homes under tenancy or care arrangements without a separate approval, subject to conditions.

What did not change

The building code still classifies the building by how it is used. A group home with more residents, or with a floor area above 300 square metres, can be a Class 3 building, and since July 2024 Class 3 designs in NSW must be prepared and declared by a registered design practitioner. That is not a formality: the declaration carries personal liability, which is why many drafting services will not touch this work.

If the home is to be enrolled as Specialist Disability Accommodation, the design also has to be certified against the SDA Design Standard by an accredited assessor, at the design stage and again as built. The four design categories — Improved Liveability, Fully Accessible, Robust and High Physical Support — are achieved only on certification, not by intention.

What it means in practice

A house that would not have worked as a group home two years ago may work now. The questions to answer before buying or committing are the same ones we run in a Property Rehearsal: which pathway applies, what class the building will be, which design category is realistic in the existing structure, and what that means for cost and time. Most operators we speak to do not yet know the rules have moved.