A month before she died of cancer, Tammie Thrower, a mother of three, was evicted and left homeless. The 52-year-old had been battling stage-four bowel cancer since 2023, and by January it had spread to her brain. Six months later, she was forced out of her home in Manly, south Brisbane, and spent her final months fruitlessly searching for a new place to live.
Her 77-year-old mother, Coral Clarke, gave up her bed and slept on the two-seat couch in her one-bedroom retirement flat to accommodate her daughter. Even in palliative care, Tammie’s main worry remained finding a home. “Those last couple of weeks ... every so often she’d say to me, ‘I wonder if this or that would give me a better chance at finding a house,’” Coral recalled.
Micah Projects, a homeless outreach service, recorded 21 people with terminal illnesses who died while homeless in Brisbane in 2025, the youngest aged 27 and the oldest 83. Several spent their final days sleeping rough before being taken to hospital. This figure does not include sudden deaths: three homeless people died on the streets in a single week in October, two at the doors of a drop-in service.
Coral expressed her anguish: “I’m suffering from as much rage as I am grief, because for so long I had managed to keep her in her own home ... I wasn’t able to give her that at the end.” Queensland’s social housing waiting list stands at 53,874 people, a record high, and the city’s rental vacancy rate is 0.7%, a near-record low, leaving evicted tenants with few options and forcing thousands into homelessness.
Tammie, a dental nurse and swimming instructor for children with special needs, never complained despite chemotherapy costing her teeth, hair, hearing and strength. After a car accident in January, doctors discovered her cancer had spread. In June, her landlord issued a no-fault eviction to carry out repairs, granting only one extra month. She and her carer inspected dozens of homes but always lost out to better offers. Coral said the stress of homelessness accelerated her daughter’s death: “She didn’t have peace of mind, she was constantly stressed.”
