Evicted While Dying: The Crisis of Homelessness for the Terminally Ill in Brisbane
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The story of Tammie Thrower, a Brisbane mother of three who died of cancer in August after being evicted from her home, is a stark illustration of a growing crisis: the increasing number of Australians facing homelessness while battling life-limiting illnesses.
Tammie Thrower’s final months were consumed not only by a relentless battle with stage-four bowel cancer,which spread to her brain in January,but also by a desperate and ultimately fruitless search for housing. Evicted from her home in Manly, a suburb in Brisbane’s south, in June, she spent her remaining days navigating a brutally competitive rental market, a worry that her mother, Coral Clarke, says exacerbated her suffering.
A System Failing the Most Vulnerable
The circumstances surrounding Thrower’s death are tragically common. According to data released by Micah Projects, a Brisbane-based homeless outreach service, at least 21 people diagnosed with terminal illnesses died while experiencing homelessness in Brisbane in 2025. The ages of those individuals ranged from 27 to 83, with many spending their final days sleeping rough before being admitted to hospital. This figure doesn’t even account for sudden, unexpected deaths among the homeless population. In a single week in october, three individuals died on the streets of Brisbane, two of them at the doors of a local homeless drop-in service.
“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,” said Clarke, who often sacrificed her own comfort to support her daughter, even sleeping on a two-seat couch in her one-bedroom retirement apartment to provide Thrower with a bed. “I’m on a pension, so I’m not particularly financially flush. But I always managed to make sure her rent got paid no matter what and that she had everything she needed to be as happy as she could be. And I wasn’t able to give her that at the end.”
The Weight of Worry, Even in Palliative Care
Even as she received palliative care at st Vincent’s Hospital, Thrower’s thoughts remained fixed on finding stable housing. Clarke recounts that in her final weeks,her daughter would frequently express her anxieties about securing a home. “Those last couple of weeks…every so frequently enough she’d say to me,you know,’I wonder if this or that would give me a better chance at finding a house,'” Clarke recalled.
The desperation to find housing was compounded by the broader context of Queensland’s housing crisis. Currently, a record 53,874 people are on the state’s social housing waiting list. With a rental vacancy rate of just 0.7%, the market offers little respite for those facing eviction, pushing thousands into homelessness.
A Life Defined by Compassion, Cut Short by Circumstance
The crisis of homelessness for the terminally ill is not unique to Brisbane. Across Australia, advocates and policymakers are grappling with the complex interplay of factors contributing to this tragic phenomenon. “Homelessness is a failure of multiple systems, and we need to connect up those systems so that we can get better outcomes, and connecting social services, healthcare and housing is a no-brainer.”
Queensland’s housing minister, Sam O’Connor, acknowledged that “too many Queenslanders with complex health needs are falling through the cracks because the systems around them haven’t been properly connected,” and stated that the government is “working to change that” through increased funding and a more coordinated support system.
Clarke’s final, cherished memory of her daughter is a moment of joy: Thrower’s request for a Bertie Beetle showbag from the Ekka, the royal Queensland show. With the help of a local Facebook group and a generous stranger named Fiona, who refused reimbursement, two showbags were delivered to the hospital. When she received them, Thrower, struggling with her hearing, playfully asked for a “birthy beeful” and shared a laugh with her mother. “And that was sort of, that was real,” clarke said.
coral’s daughter died holding her hand a week later, at the age of 50, a victim of cancer and a system that failed to provide her with the most basic of human needs: a safe place to call home.
