126 Chapter 4 than individuals remaining at home. Individuals might feel permanently disabled by their illness (defeatism), not only due to the actual disability, but also due to negative experiences in the workforce, or the process of applying and then becoming locked into disability benefits [39]. On the other hand, mental health practitioners may be ambivalent about the value of work for the group that becomes eligibile, even though occupational rehabilitation practices have been changing towards placing individuals in competitive employment [38]. The larger drop in income from work than in total personal income (which includes transfers) suggests that individuals in supported housing apply for social security more often, which might be explained by increased financial counseling or different eligibility due to changes in their household composition. Our findings should be interpreted having in mind three considerations. First, the group of applicants that are granted eligibility to supported housing is composed of a mix of individuals, with differences in key characteristics such as age, prior living situation and mental disorder diagnosis. A fifth of our population is between 18 and 21 years old, a subgroup that differs in terms of their higher likelihood of previously working, living with parents ahead of the application and having a disorder diagnosed during childhood or other or no diagnosis (Table A13 of the appendix). An additional fifth of the population is between 22 and 30 years old, leading to an overall total of 40% that is aged 30 or less. Supported housing clients in the Netherlands also differ in terms of their care needs and recovery possibility [40]. In our population, the different durations of the supported housing eligibility indications is a sign of this heterogeneity: 54% of the individuals are granted 3 years or less, indicating that they are expected to return to living independently/ in the community in the short-medium term; and 32% of the individuals are granted the maximum duration of supported housing possible – 15 years. The latter individuals need a high level of living support for a long time, and improvements in employment or autonomy are less probably. Our findings for subgroup estimates are imprecise, possibly due to opposite effects canceling out and not all recovery profiles being represented among the compliers, but do suggest that admission to supported housing depends on age and disorder type. Second, it is important to reflect on the care received by the non-eligible group. Fifty-three percent of the individuals who are not granted eligibility for supported housing are eligible for home care, while another 41% are granted no long-term care at all. Individuals judged as needing different types of alternatives to supported housing are likely to have different profiles and background characteristics such as more access to informal care and a wider support network. It is possible that there are heterogeneous effects within our control group that we cannot disentangle, namely that having some formal home care (individual or group guidance provided by floating outreach staff that visit individuals in their own tenancies) has a different impact than relying only on informal care. Nevertheless, we observe from the average spending on home care that the intensity of guidance being
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