Disabled on right path
A LARA disability support advocate is taking her company’s holistic approach to building specialised disability accommodation to other states.
Empowered Liveability opened the first of its initial two dozen homes for people with high physical and complex support needs on the outskirts of Melbourne in March.
Co-founder Nicole Doherty said the company had more homes under contract to be built this year in NSW, Queensland and South Australia, with the aim of about 50 houses being finished by the end of the year.
A registered National Disability Insurance Agency provider, Empowered Liveability offers a complete pathway for people who need disability or social housing, from finding investors and properties to support in choosing service providers and housemates.
“We are doing things a little bit differently,” Ms Doherty said. “We are almost the rebels of disability housing.
“We really want the house to be a regular rental property where people just have staff who live on site.”
The model has been in development for a couple of years with Ms Doherty also behind Wyngate Care, a company with about 25 staff providing a wide range of aged and disability care and case management services.
The guest speaker at Entrepreneurs Geelong’s monthly In Conversation with . . . breakfast, she told how 12 years ago, at the age of 26, she had taken over the failing company where she had been working.
Ms Doherty said that about seven years ago the business could have folded after an issue involving her business partner, who has since died, left the business with an unexpected $300,000 debt involving unpaid superannuation and taxes.
She said assuming the financial side of the business was operating correctly, and not taking greater ownership of it, was one of her biggest “fails” in business.
“I could have closed my business,” she said. “But that wasn’t me, and you have to be really authentic.”
The inspiration for Empowered Liveability followed her younger sister being diagnosed with cauda equina syndrome, a spinal cord injury causing paralysis.
Backed by business partners and investors keen to make a social difference and keep young people out of unsuitable nursing home care, they developed their housing investment model.
After an initial focus on clients with high physical and complex support needs to meet NDIA funding rules, the company is now moving more into the social housing space.
Ms Doherty said people needing specialised housing and their families often had no idea where to start on their housing journey.
“We map out the pathway for them,” she said.