What is to be done about Anti-Social Behaviour?

Last week there were two UK government announcements about housing, on leasehold and anti-social behaviour (ASB). The leasehold announcement caused something of a stir and I shall try to write on it later. But the ASB announcement also caught my eye:

The ASB announcement is in the form of an opinion piece in the Daily Mirror by Sir Keir himself, wherein he proposes:

• tough new "Respect Orders"
• giving police and councils more power
• allowing seizures of vehicles

Reality: government is backsliding on ASB

But in reality, the government has introduced legislation which *reduces* the penalties for ASB:

This measure would abolish "demoted tenancies" - these are a type of tenancy with lower obstacles to eviction; a secure tenancy in the social housing sector can currently be "demoted" to a demoted tenancy for a time period if there is persistent ASB. However, in practice, those landlords with the power to achieve this seldom wish to carry it through.

The actual effective remedies for ASB

The effective remedies for ASB are:

• closure orders (which evict someone for three months)
• ASB injuctions, known as ASBOs (presumably the model for Sir Keir's new Respect Orders)
• injunctions against landlords for breach of covenant

Purported remedies that don't actually work are:

• demoted tenancies
• Acceptable Behaviour Contracts
• the Community Trigger

All of these rely on the co-operation of the authorities and landlords, which is seldom forthcoming.

Why is ASB unaddressed?

Even when resources for dealing with ASB are available, the bodies capable of doing something about it won't. The problem is not one of resources and incentives but of motivation: they simply don't want to solve the problem.

Partly the issue is ideological: ASB victims constitute an outgroup, and perpetrators a favoured/ally class. The rest is practical: being a victim of ASB is correlated with imposing higher costs on social landlords through complaints about other performance and conduct issues. ASB perpetrators and ASB enablers thus have aligned interests.

What is to be done?

Firstly let's think about what *can't* be done:

• we can't change the ideological convictions of the current staff of the authorities and the housing associations
• we can't change the proportion of humans with a genetic predisposition to ASB and crime (as distinct from those whoes behaviour is affected by enforcement)
• we can't realistically rely on any effective remedy (such as imprisonment) for those who breach their legal duties to deal with ASB

You'll notice that I don't actually offer any solutions. If you can't get, say, a developer to enforce ASB covenants, you should just move house to get away from ASB, probably to a different country. Sorry!