Landlords experiences of tenants sufferingfrom severe mental illness

Background/Objectives

Persons suffering from severe mental illness (SMI) live – and prefer to live – independently, in either private or public apartment blocks without on-site services. Living in own apartments increase feelings of safety and well-being and function as a robust social status marker. Landlords are important actors in gaining stability and sustainability and it has been found that landlords have a plethora of preconceptions, attitudes, emotions as well as well as ethical dilemmas in offering apartments to this group of persons. Today there is a lack systematic knowledge about the role landlords have come play in providing sustainable housing for these persons. The main aim of this qualitative study was to describe landlords’ experiences of having tenant suffering from SMI

Methods

Sixteen landlords in various parts of Sweden participated in open in-depth interviews three years after the government proclaimed a vision zero regarding homelessness among individuals with SMI. Data was subjected to thematic latent content analysis.

Results

Landlords experienced being confronted with difficult circumstances such as mismanagement of apartments, sensitivity and provocative behaviors in relation to both tenants with SMI and neighbors. In acute situations landlords tried to collaborate with the community based psychiatric service system but were neglected. As a result and without the knowledge of how to best help they started to provide support to tenants with SMI involving going beyond professional boarders.

Discussion/Conclusion

The findings give reasons to conclude that community-based psychiatric services need to be more pro-active in their collaboration with landlords. Also education interventions with a focus on how to best help tenants with SMI need to be developed and implemented.