Improving the accessibility of Australian homes

We acknowledge that we can play a role in providing homes that are well designed and provide a better way to live, throughout all stages of life. To support this objective, we use the Livable Housing Australia (LHA) rating scheme that seeks to improve the accessibility of homes for all Australians. LHA certified homes have features that enable them to adapt to assist their occupants’ needs over time. Features include wider doorways, additional support to bathroom partitions to enable grip rails to be fitted and hobless shower cubicles to facilitate access for semi-ambulant and wheelchair bound occupants.

Accessible homes are important for all stages of life, including young parents with prams, residents who suffer injuries such as broken legs, and older occupants requiring mobility aides.

To increase the number of LHA homes offered to our customers, our design team has confirmed that 11 of our standard Medium Density home plans and 10 of our Retirement Living home plans are compliant with LHA Silver design standards. By reviewing our standard product range, our Design team was able to realise a home’s potential to meet the LHA requirements without increasing the cost to customer or making major design changes.

To further enhance the number of homes that we can influence, we are working with our builder partners to encourage them to design and build LHA homes within our developments and across Australia. We do this by establishing project targets and delivering LHA homes through builder partners at display villages and as Completed Homes. By focusing on LHA at our developments we are working to deliver our target of 20 per cent of Stockland-designed homes in our projects to be LHA Silver design certified. 

The floorplan of a standard home design showing the LHA accessibility features.