At the start of the year the prime minister's policy adviser, Martin Hurst, summoned a number of housing professionals to Number 10. The prime minister, said Hurst, was very keen on the Dundee Families antisocial behaviour project, in which families or individuals are housed in a centre with 24-hour support until their behaviour improves. Now the home secretary has given a large hint that this policy is to be turned into much wider practice.
This is good news, even though such schemes eat up cash almost as quickly as the antisocial behaviour orders they are designed to prevent. It should mean that if the preventive programmes run by RSLs – parenting skills, health projects and job interview training – fail, there is an ultimate course of action that doesn't depend so heavily on the cooperation of the courts.

Where David Blunkett should be wary is in his assertion that the use of such centres should be a compulsory part of an ASBO. If the model is to work, projects like those run by Irwell Valley in Manchester should not be seen solely as punishment. Their success lies in giving tenants incentives to behave better. This earns their respect and cooperation where the threat of a stick such as being denied social housing does not.

Antisocial behaviour is a vitally important issue – not to mention a key election battleground, especially in next week's council elections. But the Home Office often fails to see it in the round.

It is still painted too frequently by Whitehall as a problem of social housing, not one born of society as a whole. Owner-occupiers can be just as guilty of nuisance behaviour, but there are scant measures to deal with that.

Whitehall frequently paints antisocial activity as a problem of social housing, not of society as a whole

A pluralistic approach is needed to deal with new problems as they emerge. There is growing anecdotal evidence, for example, that teenagers in Manchester regard an ASBO as more of a status symbol than a punishment, competing to be banned from larger and larger areas. On top of this, landlords can face spiralling costs and protracted court battles to enforce banning orders or eviction notices (page 16).

Tools such as acceptable behaviour contracts and early intervention to encourage people to improve their behaviour and to respect their neighbours have been found by social housing practitioners to be frequently successful.

But to go as far as removing an antisocial 14-year-old means evicting his or her parents or, often, a lone mother. And as the chief executive of Croydon Churches Housing Association asks: "Do you just keep moving them? Where do they go?"

Source

Housing Today