Opposition MP calls for reintroduction of mental patient housing scheme

Labour MP Silvio Parnis calls on government to use vacant houses to solve ‘increasing’ social housing problem 

Opposition MP Mario Galea has called on the government to reintroduce a scheme through which the Housing Authority had provided Mount Carmel with flats that the mental health hospital would then furnish and use to rehabilitate patients with mental illness.

“Many patients suffering from mental illnesses don’t have a home and end up entering and exiting Mount Carmel for this reason,” Galea said during a parliamentary discussion on the Housing Authority’s financial estimates. “Some of them even have Mount Carmel registered as their address on their ID cards.”

He warned that the medication compliance rate of schizophrenic patients stands at around 26%.

“They tend to pass through phases whereby they feel good, stop taking their medication and end up at square one,” Galea said, adding that 80% of compliant patients continue living normal lives.

“I have met Mount Carmel patients who tried to get their psychiatrists not to discharge them,” he said.

Social Solidarity Minister Michael Farrugia responded that the government has identified several community homes for people with disabilities. 

Labour MP Silvio Parnis warned that social housing has become an increasingly severe problem and that some people have been waiting for a space in social housing for over 25 years.

“We can no longer keep using up land to solve it,” he said. “However, there are hundreds of vacant houses though and the Housing Authority can surely use them to find a solution to the housing problem, with the help of the private sector.”

He also called on the government to introduce a scheme to help out couples who are unable to take out a loan to buy their first house because their combined income is too low.

“The Labour Party has always had socially challenged people at its heart,” he said “We are facing new challenges and the government must address them.”

Opposition MP Stephen Spiteri warned that people on the poverty line are facing a delicate balance to make ends meet as their social housing rents have recently shot up by around €150.

He said that these people should be subsidized to furnish and improve their social housing homes, so as to improve their standards of life.

He also called on the government to conduct a study on how many social housing units are no longer occupied, warning that some people living who have been living in old people’s homes for years have not rescinded their keys to their social housing homes.