Submission · October 2026
I request that this submission be published in full and attributed to me. Please quote it only with attribution to Michael van Diermen, chooseneighbors.com. I do not want it anonymised or de-identified. It is also published at chooseneighbors.com/dhs-community-connections-submission-2026.html
This submission and the material it references are provided under the Choose Neighbors Material License (chooseneighbors.com/license). No other licence is granted.
I live in public housing in South Australia, in the group this program exists for: 18 to 64, lonely, not eligible for the NDIS or My Aged Care. Social housing fixed the roof and the rent. It did not fix this.
About twenty-seven years ago I started designing a different kind of place to live, and for the last eight or nine years I have worked on it seriously. All of it is published free at chooseneighbors.com: a design, a business plan, a working matching app, a directory of existing communities, and a public journal I have kept for seven years. In September I put the housing side of it to the Senate inquiry into social housing. This submission is the community side.
Adelaide is a safe, lawful, civilised place with a lot of isolation and housing nobody on my income can buy. For someone living alone among strangers, life here feels meaningless, and the city offers nothing to be part of that could change that. I wrote it this way in my journal: "If you're just a part of the economy, and not a part of a community, then what is there to do but work." Work is with strangers, and the peace turns to tension. The home is a room in a place managed by strangers. Thoughts and ideas have nowhere to go: "even if they have meaning there is nowhere for them, no one to talk to that would do anything." I do live in a community, in the sense that there are people all around me, but we are made up of strangers.
People assume loneliness is about wanting a partner. Mostly the feeling comes from not being part of anything with anyone you like: not part of a group of people you know can deal with problems, develop things and make things good. That is what "belonging" in your model should mean. Social outings do not supply it. Being part of something that can change things does.
Part of the reason nobody is part of anything is the scale of representation. In my district there is one elected representative for about 60,000 people, who is supposed to deal with people's local problems. In Australia generally it is one for every 50,000 to 100,000; in the United States it is one for about 800,000, where it used to be one for 30,000. Below that there is no one: no community organiser, nobody whose job it is to know a few hundred people and act on what they say. You may vote for someone you like, but you will never see or hear from them again. So people stop raising problems. Most people know there are problems and do nothing, because we are all compartmentalised and not part of any community or government that could change anything.
My design has an answer to this: a representative or organiser for every 150 people at most, chosen by the people, who knows them, has access to the public facilities and can create opportunities, and is part of a place where people chose each other. Then people would feel they are part of something. Your model already names the role ("activating local leaders and community advocates"); it needs to be funded at that scale, and chosen by the people rather than appointed over them.
That is also why it matters that you asked. When I made my Senate submission I wrote that it was not easy to send ideas to a government that has never said anything to me. This consultation is the first time anyone in government has asked. It is good. The ask should not end with the survey: build into the program a standing way for people to put ideas and problems to someone who will act on them, and to work on the fixes themselves. I have found that the worst kind of worry is a problem that could be fixed but cannot be raised anywhere. Asking is half the cure.
The three-level model lifts people towards services, groups and activities they travel to, on a schedule. That helps. But the loneliness I know lives in what is around a person every day, and the model does not touch it.
Where I live, everything around me is done by strangers from outside the area, who go home afterwards: the bins, the repairs, the shops, the council. The people next door were allocated, not chosen. I wrote in my journal that "the default ground level now for people is being alone, without community local", and that if you live around people you know, or are part of the place's design, it is your garden; if you know no one, you have nothing but your home. A visit, a coffee group or a class does not change that ground level. You go back to it.
So my design is about what is around a person, not what they can be referred to:
A test I wrote for myself, which the program could use in its goal-planning conversation: ask someone who is anxious or not at ease to think of (1) people around them they would choose to spend life with, (2) something to do because those people are around, and (3) a community they could change or design for the better because they are there. Then ask how they feel. Most people do not have the real thing, but even thinking of it helps, and it points at what support should be aiming for.
The "Around me" sections are in the journal: chooseneighbors.com/city-experiments.html
Every piece of this already exists somewhere: land trusts, cohousing, cost-rent co-ops, matching software (chooseneighbors.com/the-fragments.html). The assembly is the new part, and the matching that used to make it impractical is now something software and AI can run. It fits the values in your model: choice, self-determination, strengths-based, community-led.
It can start small. One building, one caravan park or one street is enough to test choose-your-neighbours allocation. The scales and the money are set out in the business plan: chooseneighbors.com/business-plan-2026.html
This is systems-level, and it is the part a loneliness program will not want to say. In Australia land and homes are treated as an asset that must never go down. The cheapest homes inflated faster than the expensive ones. I saved for years while prices rose around 20% a year and my term deposit paid 5%. Property price rises are left out of the inflation figures because a home is classed as an investment rather than a cost of living. Henry George wrote in 1879 that "the effect of speculation in land is to increase rent… and to prevent labor from employing itself", and it still describes what I see.
The connection to loneliness is direct:
A loneliness program working inside a housing system built to inflate will keep refilling the same pool of lonely people. The fixes in my plans: land held in trust so it cannot be speculated on, homes resold at cost plus inflation, moves as name changes, and starting in cheap places where a community can afford to exist.
Everything on chooseneighbors.com is published under the Choose Neighbors Material License (chooseneighbors.com/license). Anyone, including DHS, councils and funded partners, may use, adapt and build with the writing, designs and code, free, with credit. The one condition beyond credit: a product or project built from it that passes US$1,000,000 in lifetime revenue pays a 5% royalty above that line. The ideas themselves are free to everyone. Contributions to the project are welcome under the same licence and can share in those royalties.
I also offer my services (chooseneighbors.com/design-services):
I am one person with long experience of this one subject, not an agency. Cost depends on the project; if it genuinely builds community for isolated people, I am flexible to the point of free. I would also welcome being part of the program itself, as a participant or as one of the "local leaders and community advocates" the community level wants to activate.
You asked what should be retained, changed or added. Keep the choice and self-determination. Add the place, and someone at a human scale who knows the people in it. And keep asking. That is what I know.
Michael van Diermen South Australia
Sent to the Community Connections team, Department of Human Services, South Australia, in response to the YourSAy consultation on the Community Connections Program model (closing 6 November 2026). © 2026 Michael van Diermen · License & copyright · Pitch note 2026 · The business plan