PN MP Demands Dedicated Shelters for Malta’s Homeless Drug Users: ‘Stop Treating Them Like Stray Cats’

**PN MP Demands Dedicated Shelters for Homeless Drug Addicts: “We Can’t Keep Pretending the Problem Doesn’t Exist”**

A Nationalist MP has shattered Parliament’s usual decorum with a blunt wake-up call: Malta’s growing army of homeless drug users is sleeping in doorways, overdosing in public toilets and being “treated like stray cats” because the island offers nowhere for them to go.

Speaking during a budget debate on social policy, Claudette Buttigieg told MPs that the “invisible emergency” unfolding in Valletta’s silent alleys and Marsa’s abandoned farmhouses is costing lives and “eroding the soul” of a country that prides itself on Christian charity.
“Every night I get messages: ‘There’s a boy shaking under the Bridge of Lions, can you come?’” she said, voice cracking. “We rush with blankets and coffee, but we’re not a 24-hour service. We need a shelter that says: you are human, you matter, come in.”

### From “ħanini” to “get away from my shop”
Malta’s traditional response to the down-and-out was the parish ħanini – the neighbour who slipped a plate of rabbit stew out the back door. Yet as synthetic drugs flood the island and rents rocket, empathy is curdling into irritation. Business owners in Strait Street complain of syringes in plant pots; tourists post one-star reviews about “scary zombies” outside boutique hotels. The result? Police move the users on, and the cycle begins again.

### No bed, no detox, no way out
There are 14 emergency shelters on the island, but zero reserved for active drug users. Caritas, the Church-run agency, runs a 28-bed detox hostel in Ħal Far, yet demands abstinence before admission – a Catch-22 for someone still trembling from the last hit. Government’s only low-threshold option is a 12-bed night shelter in Floriana where substance use is tolerated but sleeping space is allocated by 7 p.m. lottery. “If you miss the draw, you sleep outside,” explains Kevin, 34, who injects heroin behind the new Tigné Point toilets. “One guy froze to death in Gżira last winter. We just want a roof, not a sermon.”

### The cost of doing nothing
Home Affairs Ministry figures show ambulance call-outs for overdoses up 38 % since 2019, while Mater Dei’s toxicology unit recorded 73 drug-related deaths last year – more than road fatalities. PN health spokesperson Stephen Spiteri warned that “every corpse on a bench is a indictment of our public-health strategy”. Economists put the wider price – emergency healthcare, policing, lost productivity – at €22 million annually, enough to fund three 24-hour shelters.

### What the PN is proposing
Buttigieg’s motion, backed by a rare cross-party trio of PN MPs, asks government to:

– Lease and repurpose a disused government building – she suggests the old Monte Kristo barracks – as a 50-bed “harm-reduction hostel” where users can sleep, shower and access clean needles without abstinence requirements.
– Embed a mobile methadone van on site, mirroring Amsterdam’s “drug consumption room” model.
– Fund NGOs (Caritas, Oasi, Sedqa) to rotate peer-support workers overnight, financed by a 5 % slice of the National Good Causes lottery fund.

### Government’s cautious reply
Social Policy Minister Michael Falzon told HOT PRESS the proposal “deserves study” but warned against “importing foreign models that clash with Maltese values”. Instead, he pointed to €4 million earmarked in the next budget for “housing-first” flats where 80 chronic rough sleepers – some with addiction – will be offered tenancies tied to social-work follow-ups. “We won’t create state-sponsored shooting galleries,” Falzon insisted.

### Community voices: fear versus faith
In Sliema, café owner Rebecca Cauchi bristles at the idea of a shelter near the ferries: “Tourists already take photos of the mess. This will kill trade.” Yet round the corner, 72-year-old pensioner Joe Saliba volunteers with the Augustinian nuns’ soup run. “Jesus didn’t ask the blind man to stop being blind before healing him,” he shrugs. “If we lose compassion, we lose Malta itself.”

### Conclusion
Malta can no longer outsource its conscience to NGO volunteers with thermos flasks. Building a shelter for homeless drug addicts is neither radical luxury nor moral surrender; it is the cheapest, most Christian investment a hyper-connected island can make. Every night we delay, another mother’s son shivers under a Paceville staircase, and another piece of Malta’s famed humanity flakes away like old limestone. The choice is simple: spend the money now, or keep spending it on body bags later.