Planning and reality in psychiatric services:: results of the Linz housing study

In Lint, capital of the Austrian province of Upper Austria, there is a considerable lack of supported housing facilities. This is astonishing since a fair amount of such places had already been available, with a rate of 1.08 on 1000 inhabitants fairly exceeding federal planning recommendations. Therefore we conducted an investigation in order to assess whether Lint was the place of birth of people living in these facilities. All three societies engaged in supported housing took part in this study thus providing an almost complete survey of the population at interest. 229 persons were covered by this investigation. Of these only 34% really belonged to the region of Linz, whereas the others had moved to Lint for psychiatric and/or social reasons. Causes and consequences of these findings are discussed.