Toowoomba mum with disability evicted from house, belongings left on front lawn as Qld housing crisis exposed

In a shocking indictment of the state’s growing housing crisis, a woman in a wheelchair was allowed to be legally evicted from her regional Queensland home by police.

A Toowoomba woman in a wheelchair has called for drastic reforms to Queensland’s tenancy laws to protect people with disabilities, after she was allowed to be legally evicted from her home by police.

In a situation compared to a “humiliation ritual”, Alyce Nelligan and her three children — of which two have complex needs — had their belongings thrown onto the front yard of their Cambooya rental property on Friday before the door was locked behind them.

Ms Nelligan, who is a leading Queensland disability advocate, said the property owner sourced an eviction notice about a month prior to reacquire the house for “financial reasons”.

Alyce Nelligan with her and her family's belongings after they were evicted from their rental home, Friday, May 23, 2025. Picture: Kevin Farmer

The real estate agency enforced it this week, despite the family having found a new rental in Toowoomba on Wednesday and were in the process of moving out.

“When we notified them that we hadn’t found somewhere, they decided that they would take us to QCAT and get an eviction order and obviously we had no grounds to not leave,” Ms Nelligan said.

“Being disabled is not a reason to not be evicted and because the property was wanted by the owners, that eviction order was granted.

“At the end of the day when that order was ready to be served, it was served and we were evicted from our property.”

The property manager and Queensland Police, who arrived at the property that morning, granted her an extra two hours to be able to move out vital pieces of equipment like her bed and ventilator.

With no funding for specialist disability accommodation in her plan with the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Ms Nelligan said the search for a new home in a tight rental market exposed how unfit Australia’s housing market was for people in wheelchairs.

“We started looking for properties that would suit me and of course found nothing because 96 per cent of all Australian properties are not accessible in any way, and so trying to find that with a vacancy rate of 1 per cent is like finding a unicorn,” she said.

“Especially one within your budget – if you’re looking at renting something like an SDA property privately, you’re going to pay $800, $900 a week, so it’s very difficult to find a house.

“I need the highest level of access just to be able to live in a property, and of course, I haven’t been able to get that anywhere because that’s extremely rare.”

Queensland disability advocate Alyce Nelligan is calling for drastic changes to tenancy laws after her family were evicted from their rental home, Friday, May 23, 2025. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Ms Nelligan and her husband Brendan, who is her full-time primary carer, eventually found a house in Darling Heights — with even poorer accessibility than their previous property.

“I‘ve rented for 10 years with my partner, I lived in our house for six years and now through the fact that I use a wheelchair, I was evicted and am living in an unsuitable property,” she said through tears.

“Believe you me, I’m grateful for (our new house) but I don’t know how I’m going to have a shower tomorrow I don’t know how I’m going to use my bed, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Ms Nelligan said most people with disabilities had to “make do” with semi-accessible houses, which were usually recent builds in some of Toowoomba’s growing suburbs.

“A lot of us live, as a term I like to call hillbilly disability, where you just kind of have to make do with a wood chuck at the door and all these sorts of things and we’re pretty resourceful and resilient,” she said.

“But most people in Toowoomba would find it extremely difficult to find a house that meets their access needs.”

Ms Nelligan said knowing she was less independent now had been the saddest part of the whole incident.

“This last house that I had, I actually had access — I could go outside, I could open the front door, I could meet my visitors, I could walk down the driveway, I could take my kids for a bike ride independently,” she said.

“Now, not only has that been taken away and I’m grieving that, but living through the humiliation and the shame of being literally removed from your house by police in front of your neighbours, having your entire home’s content on the front lawn and also then knowing that you’re going to have to struggle every single day again for the next God knows how long.

“I’m truly broken — it doesn’t matter how successful I become, I can never overcome the fact that my disability means that I cannot exist in an able-bodied society.”

Ms Nelligan said she would have needed to be taken to hospital as a social admission if the family had not secured a new rental.