Poor sleep, unhealthy diets and stress compound to leave homeless at risk of dying decades early

When Rebecca Hendrix was living in a camper trailer in bush in Perth's south earlier this year, she knew something was not right.

"Probably three nights, four nights out of a week, I would be on my bed in the fetal position crying, just with excruciating pain," she recalled.

"And it was him that actually made me sort of go to the doctors.

"It was, I've got to do this for my boy, he can't be doing this, looking after his Mum."

When the 47-year-old did visit a doctor, she was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer.

But doctors would not allow her to start chemotherapy because it can weaken patients' immune systems — a risk they were unwilling to take until Rebecca was in more stable housing.

She was able to begin treatment while in transitional accommodation, before moving into her own place a few weeks later, thanks to a social housing provider.

"I've got my home, now I've got my boys with me, and I think that'll be my strongest medicine, beating this cancer," she said.

Homelessness leads to poor health

Rebecca's story is not uncommon, with research finding clear links between homelessness and poor health.

Western Australian research has found people who have experienced homelessness die at an average age of about 48 — decades short of the average of 83 for most Australians.

It is a battle that street nurse Natale Bogoias is on the front line of, bringing health care to rough sleepers where they are.

Poor sleep, unhealthy diets and the impacts of stress all compound for people who are homeless, some of whom are pushed to the streets because of health complications.

"When people do end up on the streets, it vastly affects their mental health and their physical health," Ms Bogoias said.

Without stable routines or even phones to keep track of time and appointments, it can be hard for people to look after their own health, she said.

"All of those things are just overlooked. People are focused on how they're going to get through each day," Ms Bogoias said.

Ms Hendrix agreed.

"I think if I was in a house, it would have all been different," she said.

Supports struggle to keep up

Stories like Rebecca's are a growing concern for Traci Cascioli, chief operating officer at St Patrick's Community Support Centre, who has been noticing more families in need of help.

"People will hold out for as long as they can before raising the alarm and reaching out," she said.

"Very often, the condition has been left to go untreated for such a long time that their needs require urgent medical attention."

Those cases were even more challenging, she said, because services had generally been set up to support single men and women.

"It's the thing that keeps me up at night because other cohorts that we work with, other people that we work with, there are perhaps more solutions that we can use and link in, more creative options out there," Ms Cascioli said.

A St Pat's initiative to provide case management support to families opened recently, reaching capacity within only a few weeks.

On the whole, Ms Cascioli said Perth's housing crisis was leaving service providers "having to hold people as best we can in a pattern of meeting their basic needs whilst we sort of tread water".

Priced out of the market

That was the situation Rebecca had been in before her diagnosis.

She said she had not been able to get back into stable housing for about four years, ever since her landlord decided to sell the property she had been renting.

Rebecca and her youngest son moved down to Rockingham, where she found a cleaning job, but they stayed living in a tent at a caravan park.

"Just too expensive for me, being single," she said.

"We just, I dunno, plodded along, did what we gotta do just to make it through each day."

Western Australia's growing social housing waitlist, which sat at 23,110 applications at the end of October, was not an option, with many people waiting years to get into a home.

Rebecca had been on the priority wishlist, but was not offered a property in time.

'Pull your finger out'

Now settling into her home for Christmas, Rebecca hopes the government will do more to help people in similar situations.

"There's that many vacant blocks that they can put on dongas, or even just a couple shower blocks because some people like living out of their campers, out of their caravans, but they don't have the spot to go to," Rebecca said.

While not specifically endorsing that idea, Ms Cascioli said there was a need for homelessness services to be "more flexible and nimble" in their thinking, and to work together to find options for vulnerable people.

The state government said its mid-year budget update, released last week, showed $6.3 billion in investment in housing over the last five years, much of that in trying to lift social housing numbers.

"And making sure, I hate to use [the phrase] 'pull every lever', but try and do everything we can to get housing supply increased."

That included investing another $234 million for an extra 329 social homes and to refurbish 91 homes.

A WA government spokesperson also said while housing pathways were being built, "the system still had to reach people where they were". 

“In 2025, the Cook Government provided significant funding boosts to expand Coordinated Outreach across the Perth metropolitan area, strengthening the teams that connect people to housing and supports."

But its housing measures, like almost everything the government has tried, are likely to struggle to move the needle, given population growth and continuing constraints in the construction sector.

Rebecca's message to the government was simple.

"There's a lot of people out there that need this, sick and homeless people," she said.