The great Australian dream is just that for many people. It’s something that we strive for, but for those who are handicapped or disabled it becomes more difficult …. more important.  Even more so if you’re young.   Over 6,000 young Australians with disability are forced to live in nursing homes.  Nigel Napoli from Piety THP tells us about how his company has joined with another to provide a solution and possibly a wonderful opportunity for investors.
Transcripts:
Kevin:   Well, the great Australian dream is just that for many, many people. It’s something that we strive for. But for those who are handicapped or disabled it becomes even more difficult, even more important, and even more so if you’re young. We’ve seen the terrible situation where well over 6,000 young Australians with disability are forced to live in nursing homes. This breaks my heart, but it’s so good to see a company that’s now … Well, two companies who’ve gotten together. We’ll talk about that in a moment. PietyTHP formally announced their new partnership with Summer Housing. Now Summer Housing was established in 2007, and to tell us a little more about the association and more about Summer Housing I’m joined by Nigel Napoli who is the head of sales and marketing at PietyTHP. Nigel welcome to the show.
Nigel:   Thank you.
Kevin:   Nigel, this is as I’ve said, very near and dear to my heart. We’ve had some friends of ours who’ve been through this situation. I know just how important and distressing it can be. Tell me about Summer Housing and where it’s come from, what they do.
Nigel:   Sure, okay. Summer Housing is a housing provider that specialises, as you said previously, for a lot of younger Australians. What the whole goal is to provide housing where they can self care and find themselves a place where they can integrate with the local community.
Kevin:   Yeah. It’s very important. Because I said the only alternative for many of them, thousands of them, in fact has been to go into retirement villages where they’re mixing with 70, 80, and even 90-year-old people, which is not a good environment for young people in their 20s and 30s.
Nigel:   That’s absolutely correct.
Kevin:   Summer Housing has been around for a while. You’ve now partnered with them. You are a construction company, and you’ve put together a special project which is called View. Whereabouts is it? And tell me about it.
Nigel:   Sure. Views is one of our projects under construction in Rockdale. The development’s about 500 metres from the main shopping centre in Rockdale and about the same distance to both Banksia and Rockdale’s station, so it’s really, really well located. When we started working with the Summer Housing organisation, the focus was to identify 10 apartments that we thought were fit for purpose, so we did that. The arrangement with them is the 10 apartments plus the apartment controlled by the carer.
Kevin:   By the carer.
Nigel:   There’s an on-site carer, yep. So all the apartments are interconnected.
Kevin:   Yeah. But these are all brand new. You built them?
Nigel:   Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kevin:   Yeah.
Nigel:   We purpose-built them. The idea about the construction of it was so that it had longevity. It was very important to deal with this generation of occupant, but then as time goes on, if any variation is needed or it had to be refitted for another purpose for another person moving forward, that it had that adaption capability.
Kevin:   Who will be the owners of these 10 apartments? How does the ownership work?
Nigel:   Okay. The ownership structure is with the Summer Housing. The relationship is with NRAS, so it’s a national scheme designed by the government. It’s a National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Kevin:   Well, by my reckoning, you’ve done 10. You probably got about another 6,000-odd to do. What’s the timeframe, Nigel? I mean, are you looking at doing more of these?
Nigel:   We are. We are. This was a really good opportunity for us, because the relationship was struck up at the right time. It allowed us to integrate the changes with our construction programme. And to be honest with you, we were really glad to do it, because we’re all about diversity. A lot of our projects, we try and aim them at being family friendly. As far as we’re concerned, this is just all part of the fabric of the community.
Kevin:   Yeah. Well, I’ve had a look at the website. They’re beautifully designed, and they’ve got to, obviously, cater for people with special needs. These have been designed to meet the requirements under the NDIS, and they have things like ceiling hoists. And they look very, very nice, Nigel. Congratulations to you and your company. I think this is a classic example of developers giving back, and we totally support what you are doing with Summer Housing and congratulate you on that initiative. Well done.
Nigel:   Thank you very much. We appreciate that.
Kevin:   Yeah. Okay. Go to it. Have a look at it. Just look for the website View, V-I-E-W, Rockdale, R-O-C-K-D-A-L-E, that’s one word, viewrockdale.com.au. Nigel, thanks for your time. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Nigel:   Terrific. Thanks again.