By the time most families are worrying about securing a rental property, Maddy Scott and Sam Tunks have already been through more than most people will face in a lifetime. Their one-year-old daughter, Audrey, has endured 14 surgeries and six rounds of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of medulloblastoma, a malignant brain cancer that begins in the cerebellum and can spread through the cerebrospinal fluid to the brain and spinal cord. Now, as Audrey prepares to restart chemotherapy, her family has no home to return to.
As 7News reports, Audrey had only recently come home to Frankston, in Melbourne's southeast, after a year of intensive treatment at Monash Children's Hospital, when she was rushed back to hospital with life-threatening sepsis. The source of that infection was traced not to a hospital ward or an obvious contaminant, but to the family's own house. Subsequent testing found indoor moisture levels 29 times higher than what is considered safe, allowing up to seven mould species to take hold across the property. Critically, no visible mould was present. The danger was entirely hidden.
Scott told 7News the readings were "almost double what would be allowed for Audrey," with the inspection report stating the home was unsafe for both healthy and vulnerable people. For a child already rendered immunocompromised by chemotherapy, the risk profile is acute. Research published by the Western Australian Department of Health confirms that sensitive populations face serious dangers from indoor mould exposure, and peer-reviewed literature shows that invasive mould infection is a major cause of morbidity and mortality specifically among immunocompromised children. When mould spores are inhaled by a child whose immune system is already suppressed, they can begin to grow on living tissue, compounding underlying illness in ways that can escalate rapidly into systemic infection. Audrey's experience appears to be a clinical illustration of exactly that risk.
Since the sepsis episode, Audrey has received close to 70 doses of antibiotics. The family has been told to vacate immediately and discard all soft furnishings, including mattresses, couches, children's books, and soft toys. These are not small logistics. They are the material fabric of a toddler's daily life, stripped away while chemotherapy looms again next week.
A Rental Market That Punishes the Vulnerable
The Scott-Tunks family's predicament does not exist in isolation. It sits inside a rental market that has become structurally hostile to anyone outside the conventional employment model. Both Scott and Tunks stepped back from work to provide full-time care for Audrey and her three-year-old brother Elliot, a decision any reasonable person would understand and most would make themselves. But that decision has left the couple without the payslips landlords and agents require to even be considered. Scott put it plainly to 7News: "It just feels insane that Audrey starts chemo again next week and we don't currently have anywhere to call home."
The broader context is grim. According to the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's State of the Housing System 2025 report, housing affordability continued to deteriorate in 2024, with rents and prices hitting record highs as supply fell short of demand. An estimated 1.26 million low-income households were in financial housing stress in 2024-25, and one in five renter households was classified as low-income and in financial difficulty. Melbourne's rental vacancy rate has edged up but remains well below the three per cent threshold associated with a balanced market. For a family with no income documentation and two young children, one critically ill, competing in that environment is close to impossible by design.
There is a principled argument, often made from the centre-left, that Australia's rental system must be reformed to better account for caregivers, people with medical dependencies, and households navigating circumstances beyond their control. The structural barriers that stopped the Scott-Tunks family from securing a home are not unique to them. Millions of Australians face a system that treats employment income as the only legitimate signal of creditworthiness, regardless of the reason someone is not in paid work. The disability sector, advocacy groups, and housing researchers have long pointed to this gap.
The Hidden Danger of Mould in Australian Homes
One element of this story that deserves more attention is the invisible nature of the threat. The Frankston home showed no visible mould. There was no black staining on bathroom grout, no discolouration on walls. Yet seven species were growing behind the scenes, producing conditions the report described as a very high risk to both healthy and vulnerable populations. Australian health authorities note that mould can hide in ceiling voids, around window frames, and within wall cavities, rendering visual inspection an unreliable safeguard. For immunocompromised individuals in particular, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recognises that housing quality is foundational to health outcomes. A damp, poorly ventilated property is not simply an inconvenience; for a child undergoing chemotherapy, it can be a clinical hazard.
To help the family, a GoFundMe campaign has been established to secure safe accommodation while Audrey resumes treatment. The page describes the ask in straightforward terms: Maddy and Sam simply want a place that does not make their daughter's fight any harder than it already is.
Where Individual Hardship Meets Systemic Failure
Stories like Audrey's resist easy political categorisation. They are not primarily about government spending or ideological preference. They are about the cumulative weight of what happens when medical vulnerability, housing scarcity, and the financial exposure of caregiving collide at the same moment. A family that has given up income to do the right thing by a critically ill child should not then face homelessness as a consequence.
The pragmatic centre can hold two things at once: that private rental markets have a legitimate role in housing allocation, and that those markets require some basic adjustment to handle the reality of caregiving and medical hardship. That is not a radical position. It is a recognition that a well-functioning society needs safety mechanisms that catch people before their circumstances become catastrophic. Audrey's family is already facing more than enough. The least a functioning housing system should be able to do is give them a front door to come home to.