Congregate Living for the Mentally III: Patients as Tenants

The authors describe an apartment-living project for chronic mental patients released from the Hillside Division of the Long Island Jewish-Hillside Medical Center. The apartments, which are rented by the hospital and sublet to the patients, are located in modern, well-maintained high-rise buildings within commuting distance from the hospital. To avoid creating a psychiatric ghetto, the project rents no more than two apartments in buildings of a hundred or more units. The hospital was able to rent the apartments by assuring the landlords that the hospital would be a financially responsible tenant and that staff would be in continuing contact with the patients, would be available to the landlords if problems arose, and would remove trouble-some tenants. Some of the problems encountered by the patients in the program are described, as are guidelines for selecting those who have a reasonable chance of benefiting from such a program.