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MTA Brisbane
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- The support, defined properly
- Why Brisbane sees this more than the numbers suggest
- The three criteria
- What the money actually buys
- Ninety days, treated as three phases
- Your rights in the accommodation under Queensland law
- Requesting MTA funding
- Grounds on which MTA is refused
- Four supports that get confused with each other
- What to ask a Brisbane MTA provider
- Where we support MTA across Brisbane and South East Queensland
Medium Term Accommodation · Brisbane
NDIS Medium Term Accommodation in Brisbane, and why Queensland needs it more than most
Queensland runs its specialist spinal rehabilitation out of a single unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital. In 2024 that unit held around forty beds for the entire state, and Spinal Life Australia estimated more than thirty people could be waiting for a rehabilitation program at any one time. When capacity is that tight, the thing that decides how long somebody occupies a bed is often not their recovery — it is whether anywhere exists for them to go next. Medium Term Accommodation is the NDIS support built for precisely that gap. This page explains what MTA funds, the discharge rule that most people miss, what it costs in 2026–27, and what rights you hold in the accommodation under Queensland law.
If a Brisbane hospital has raised discharge, ring us before the date is set rather than after. It is the single thing that most changes what is possible.
MTA in Brisbane at a glance
The support, defined properly
Medium Term Accommodation is funding for somewhere to live when you cannot move into your long-term home because your disability supports are not ready. That is the operational guideline’s own framing, and the causal link in the middle of it is the whole test.
MTA is not a response to a housing shortage, or to a family breakdown, or to an eviction. It exists for a single configuration: the destination is known, something disability-related is holding up the move, and in the meantime there is nowhere suitable to wait. The ramp is being built. The SDA apartment has a tenant moving out in six weeks. The SIL house has been offered and the roster is still being recruited.
It is also not a standalone support. MTA is only included in a plan as part of a wider set of home and living supports, which means a request for MTA on its own, with nothing around it, tends to go nowhere.
Why Brisbane sees this more than the numbers suggest
The Princess Alexandra Hospital’s Spinal Injuries Unit is Queensland’s only dedicated specialist spinal injuries rehabilitation unit. In 2024 the ABC reported it as holding roughly forty beds for the whole state, with the chief executive of Spinal Life Australia, Mark Townend, estimating that more than thirty people across Queensland could be waiting for rehabilitation programs at any given time. He described the situation as typical, attributing it to a shortage of rehabilitation beds and to bed blocking.
Queensland Health has been investing in the unit — a refurbishment reached $30 million after an additional $9 million was announced — and points to specialist spinal services in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Townsville, alongside the Spinal Outreach Team and a QuickStart program delivering in-reach support to patients waiting to transfer into the intensive unit.
But in-reach support while you wait is not the same as a rehabilitation bed, and a rehabilitation bed occupied by somebody who has finished their program is not available to the person who needs it next. That is the mechanism by which housing delay becomes a clinical capacity problem, and it is the reason MTA matters disproportionately in a state with one specialist unit rather than several.
For a family, the practical consequence is specific. If somebody is in the PA spinal unit, or at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, or in rehabilitation at QEII or Logan, the housing conversation should start weeks before anybody mentions a date. Not because the hospital will push you out, but because the alternative to planning is a very small set of options.
The three criteria
For an ordinary request, all three have to hold.
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On a hospital discharge where eligibility for SDA, SIL, ILO or home modifications is established, the first of those falls away.
What the money actually buys
For 2026–27 the national price limit for MTA is $162.85 per day, under support item 01_082_0115_1_1. In remote areas it rises to $227.99 and in very remote areas to $244.28. The schedule commenced on 1 July 2026. Brisbane itself sits in the national band, though parts of Queensland that families commute from do not.
That daily rate buys the accommodation for the period of the stay and nothing else. The exclusions are worth reading in full, because they are where the surprises live:
- Day-to-day living costs. Food, electricity, internet. These are costs everyone has, so the scheme does not meet them.
- Personal care and other in-home supports. The disability supports you need during the stay are not part of this funding.
- Long-term rent or affordable housing. Neither is an NDIS function.
- Respite and emergency housing. Different supports with different tests.
The support gap is the one to close before you move in. Anything already sitting in your plan remains available to you during the stay. Where the stay generates genuinely extra need — additional personal care, assistive technology, assistance with the move itself — that can be funded too, but only if somebody asks for it, and the moment to ask is when the MTA request is lodged.
Ninety days, treated as three phases
The guideline funds MTA generally for up to 90 days, and allows longer where there is evidence of continuing need arising from disability support needs. An extension is an evidence exercise lodged before the period ends, not an explanation offered after it.
The useful framing is not “ninety days” but three blocks of roughly a month.
The first few weeks are for confirming the destination in writing and building a dated dependency chain. Modifications mean an OT report, then a quote, then approval, then a builder, then an inspection — each one waiting on the last. Identify the longest chain and start it immediately, because that chain, not the total, determines whether you make the date.
The middle stretch is for running slow things simultaneously. Recruitment, equipment with long lead times, assistive technology requests. It is also the right window for a trial visit to the destination, because a problem found in week six can be solved and the same problem found in week twelve cannot.
The last block is a decision rather than a phase. Either the move happens or the extension is lodged, and if the critical path has slipped by more than a couple of weeks you will already know by about day seventy.
Your rights in the accommodation under Queensland law
Queensland regulates shared and short-stay living arrangements through the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008, and a good deal of disability accommodation falls under its rooming accommodation provisions rather than ordinary tenancy rules. The Residential Tenancies Authority administers it. It is worth knowing the shape of it before you sign anything.
A rooming accommodation agreement is made on Form R18, and a provider that fails to give you a written agreement faces penalties. The agreement can be signed by the resident or by a nominated representative such as a family member or support person, and the form lets you nominate a support person to receive notices and paperwork — informal, or formal such as somebody holding a power of attorney. That nomination is more useful than it sounds, because it means letters do not simply arrive and sit unopened.
The provider must give every service you are paying for, consider requests to change services fairly, and give written notice on Form R9 before entering your room.
If something goes wrong, the sequence is defined. Raise it with the provider and keep copies. Issue a Form R11 notice to remedy breach, which gives seven days to fix the problem. If it is not fixed, a Form R13 notice of intention to leave follows. A provider may issue a Form R12 notice to leave, and retaliatory notices can be disputed. The RTA runs a free dispute resolution service, and for some matters using it is a precondition to QCAT hearing the case. QCAT decides tenancy disputes — it can order lower rent, money back, changes to services, or an end to the agreement — and it also handles guardianship for adults with impaired decision-making.
Numbers worth keeping: the RTA on 1300 366 311, QSTARS tenant advice through Tenants Queensland on 1300 744 263, the Office of the Public Guardian, including community visitors, on 1300 653 187, the Public Trustee on 1300 360 044, and Disability Advocacy Pathways on 1800 130 582. Concerns about the quality of an NDIS-funded service go to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission rather than to the RTA.
The question to ask a Brisbane provider before a placement is therefore quite precise: what kind of agreement am I signing, is it a Form R18 rooming accommodation agreement, and who is recorded as my support person on it?
Requesting MTA funding
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Grounds on which MTA is refused
Each of these is a refusal reason in the guideline rather than a matter of judgement:
- It would be reasonable for you to stay with informal supports in the meantime.
- You are able to stay in your current accommodation while you wait.
- The need is not disability-related — general home repairs being the example given.
- The support is properly funded by another service or organisation.
- Your long-term home is not confirmed, other than on the hospital and justice discharge pathways.
Four supports that get confused with each other
| Support | What it pays for | Usual length | Includes support workers? |
|---|---|---|---|
| MTA | Accommodation while your long-term home is not ready | Generally up to 90 days | No |
| STA | Accommodation and support for time apart from your informal carers | Up to 28 days a year, 14 at a time | Yes, claimed separately since 1 July 2026 |
| SIL | The support roster inside a shared home | Ongoing | Yes, that is the support |
| SDA | The dwelling, where purpose-built or modified | Ongoing | No |
MTA and STA are the pair most often mixed up, and the difference is purpose rather than duration. Short term accommodation funds time apart from the people who provide your unpaid care. Medium term accommodation funds a gap between housing. The short term accommodation guideline settles it directly: if you are waiting for home modifications, STA is not funded and MTA may be.
What to ask a Brisbane MTA provider
- What is the realistic start date, and what would move it forward? An answer framed as a process beats an answer framed as enthusiasm.
- Who supports me during the stay, and are they the team who will support me afterwards? Continuity across a transition is worth a lot and rarely offered.
- What agreement am I signing? See the Queensland section above; expect specificity.
- What have you actually done before when a destination slipped past day ninety? Ask for the real example, not the policy.
- Can you manage my clinical needs as they stand now? Tube feeding, complex bowel care, tracheostomy management, seizure plans and subcutaneous medication each fall inside a defined scope of practice. A straight answer here matters more than anything else on the list.
- Who is my contact, and what happens on a Sunday afternoon? Transitions come apart at weekends.
We are a registered NDIS provider. We are not a hospital, a clinical service or a housing agency, and where we are not the right fit for a placement we would rather say so in the first conversation than discover it in week six.
Where we support MTA across Brisbane and South East Queensland
MTA Brisbane: common questions
Generally up to 90 days. The guideline also permits longer funding where there is evidence you need it longer because of your disability support needs, so the 90 days is a starting position rather than a ceiling. An extension has to be lodged on evidence before the period expires. As a rule of thumb, if the critical path to your long-term home has slipped by more than a fortnight, you will know by about day seventy, and that is when the request should go in.
The national price limit is $162.85 per day under support item 01_082_0115_1_1, effective from 1 July 2026. Remote areas are $227.99 per day and very remote areas $244.28. Brisbane sits within the national band. The rate covers accommodation only and does not include day-to-day living costs such as food, power or internet, which remain the participant’s own expense.
Frequently, because it takes the housing step off the critical path. Where someone is medically ready but their long-term housing is weeks or months away, MTA is the designed mechanism for the gap, and on the hospital discharge pathway a confirmed long-term home is not required where eligibility for SDA, SIL, ILO or home modifications has been established. The constraint is almost always how early the request is made. Starting while the person is still an inpatient, with the hospital social worker involved, changes the timeline more than anything that happens later.
It depends on the type of accommodation, and in Queensland a great deal of shared and short-stay disability accommodation falls under the rooming accommodation provisions of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008. In that case the agreement is made on Form R18, and you can nominate a support person on the form to receive notices on your behalf. Providers must give a written agreement, must provide the services you pay for, and must give written notice on Form R9 before entering your room. Disputes go through the Residential Tenancies Authority’s free dispute resolution service and then, for many matters, to QCAT. Ask the provider directly which type of agreement applies.
Purpose rather than length. Short term accommodation exists so that you and your primary informal supports can have mutually rewarding time apart, generally up to 28 days a year and 14 at a time. Medium term accommodation exists because your long-term home is not ready. They are not interchangeable, and the short term accommodation guideline is explicit that STA is not funded while you are waiting for home modifications, with MTA potentially funded instead.
Say so early, because the basis of the funding has changed. MTA assumes a destination exists, so if it disappears the honest position is that the original grounds have gone. The work then shifts to establishing a new long-term option — an SDA application, a SIL vacancy search, an individualised living option, or social housing — while seeking an extension on the evidence of continuing disability-related need. What never helps is letting the 90 days run out while everybody hopes the original plan recovers.
Sometimes, and we will tell you plainly which situation you are in. We deliver supported independent living and related supports, so in some cases an MTA placement with us leads into a longer-term arrangement we also support — the best outcome, because the team does not change at the hardest possible moment. In other cases the destination belongs to another provider or is the person’s own home, and our job is to hold the bridge and hand over cleanly. Either way you should know which on the first call rather than at week eight.
