Community
12 March, 2025
Future of Alabaster House still up in the air
A solution for the low-cost accommodation provider has yet to be found.
The owners of the Townsville-based Alabaster House plan to sell one of their resident blocks to secure the funds required to continue providing accommodation to Gulf dialysis patients while a suitable buyer is found for the rest of the facility.
Alabaster House co-owner Robyn Girdler told North West Weekly she was in negotiations with an interested buyer for their nine-room Hicks Street residence, which would provide much-needed cashflow to keep the doors open at the five other sites they operate.
She said there were currently nine permanent kidney dialysis patients living at Alabaster House, all of whom are originally from the Gulf, and they needed to continue to have a reliable space to live in the future.
Mrs Girdler said Alabaster House would also continue to take in new clients for the foreseeable future.
“If we can sell Hicks Street then we can lighten our workload a little and hang in there financially until someone can take us over,” she said.
“The dialysis patients keep asking what is going to happen to them – so we need to make sure they are being cared for because they don’t have other options.
“We are talking to other service providers, and we are in discussions with one in particular, but we are still awaiting news about whether they can secure state government funding to purchase all our other buildings.
“We are operating as normal and still accepting new clients, including another from Mount Isa on the weekend.”
As previously reported, Mrs Girdler and her husband Graham are looking to offload the 53-bed accommodation space they founded in Townsville 15 years ago following their own recent health setbacks.
The couple draw no salary for their work and regularly use their savings to fund the service.
Alabaster House remains one of the only affordable options for rural patients forced to utilise the patient travel subsidy scheme to attend medical appointments, and the couple remain committed to finding a buyer who will keep it operating.
The majority of the patients who stay at Alabaster House are Indigenous residents from the Gulf.