Queensland's competitive housing market has added further pressure to the disability accommodation sector, as providers look to address a "new century" of support that emphasises independent living.
Endeavour Foundation has committed $45 million over four years towards building accessible housing — the largest investment in its 70-year history.
One of 70 new homes being built or renovated by Endeavour has been opened at Arundel on the Gold Coast, a region identified as having a high undersupply of properties.
"It's so hard to get land at the moment, being able to build these houses is getting harder and harder," Endeavour's house site supervisor Aaron Highland said.
This type of housing features wider door frames, wheelchair-accessible benches, assistance alarms to alert an onsite carer, and is centrally located to instil a greater sense of community inclusion.
But hurdles to building such accommodation include migration pushing property prices higher and vacancy rates continuing to drop.
Three decades of independence
Grant Stevens has been living independently with the support of Endeavour for 33 years.
He has learned to care for himself, and said he cooks a mean bangers and mash.
"It's a good opportunity to learn more and to do more things for themselves," Mr Stevens said.
"People will feel good in themselves."
Mr Highland, who has worked with Mr Stevens, said specialist disability accommodation fostered "a sense of freedom".
"If we're constantly getting better at the things that we're doing, we're going to be able to achieve more things."
'Ballistic' housing market
Endeavour Foundation interim chief executive David Blower said they initially budgeted $35 million for the housing program, but increased that to $45 million due to demand.
Of that, $8.4 million is being spent on the Gold Coast alone.
"The housing market in total is going ballistic as far as prices and shortage of supply. Disability accommodation is no different to that," Mr Blower said.
Mr Blower said people wanted to live as independently as possible, and that meant housing had to be fit for purpose.
"We all aspire to have our own homes, we all aspire to be independent, and we all aspire to live in a safe environment," he said.
'New century of disability support'
Aaron Highland said housing had to keep up as Endeavour was "going into a new century of disability support work".
"It's one of those things where the old houses are starting to become so outdated that this new assisted technology is going to make everything so much more assessable," he said.
The state government has committed $1.9 billion towards social housing, including accessible properties totalling 7,400 new builds over four years.
