A woman with disability was drugged, raped, regularly hit by staff and deprived of food while living in a Sydney boarding house, a royal commission examining homelessness has been told.
Charlotte, 61, was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager and has lived in about a dozen hospitals and state-run institutions in NSW since, including a Stanmore boarding house.
"Life at the boarding house was terrible. It was like a prison. We were treated horribly by the staff and the owner," she said in a statement read to the disability royal commission on Monday.
"I was hit and raped while I was living there ... I had no control over my life and no privacy."
She also witnessed a man get stabbed to death after an intruder entered the property.
Charlotte, who lived at the home for about 15 years in the 80s and 90s, said the managers and staff would often hit residents.
"One of the girls who worked in the boarding house kitchen was really violent and abusive," she said.
"Depending on how she felt, Samantha would sometimes not give us breakfast or lunch."
Charlotte, not her real name, said the same woman would also take her wages from working at a sheltered workshop and her clothes.
"(She) would be down at the station waiting for me and she would take all my money from me," she said.
"(The same woman) would also take all of my pension money and I was left with $2 a day to live off ... If I didn't give it to her, she would hit me."
Charlotte said the owner of the boarding house also struck residents.
"He had access to everyone's bankbooks and would make us sign a withdrawal form every fortnight so that he could withdraw money from our accounts," she alleged.
Charlotte said residents who complained were given drugs to keep them quiet.
"I was drugged all the time," she said.
She said she was often forced to clean up other people's vomit and faeces and a doctor who visited the residents was allegedly defrauding the Medicare system.
"People that lived there would sometimes go to the toilet on the floor and the owner would make me clean it up. If I didn't clean it up, he would hit me."
"The boarding house was in very bad condition. There were alcoholics living (there). It was like a mini-institution. That's what it felt like to me," she said.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has turned its focus to the experiences of disabled people who have been homeless or lived in insecure housing in NSW and Victoria.
The inquiry, sitting for five days in Parramatta, Sydney, will also examine whether insecure accommodation exposes people with disability to a greater risk of violence, abuse, neglect or exploitation.
"The evidence of people with disability is likely to identify a number of systemic issues including, first, a lack of affordable, suitable and accessible housing for people with disability and an over-reliance on crisis and temporary accommodation," counsel assisting Kate Eastman said in her opening remarks.
More than 10,000 people with severe or profound disability are estimated to experience homelessness each year.
People with severe or profound disability are over-represented among certain forms of marginal housing, including supported accommodation, boarding houses and caravan parks, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
