Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
New powers to evict tenants that persistently indulge in anti-social behaviour
Housing Minister Grant Shapps recently announced plans to speed up the time it sometimes takes to evict tenants that persistently indulge in anti-social behaviour. He has proposed a new mandatory power for possession, enabling previous convictions for anti-social behaviour to be taken into account to shorten the often long legal process.
''Trigger' offences, to enable this new mandatory power to be used, are likely to inclu
- a conviction for a serious housing-related offence - including violence against neighbours, drug dealing and criminal damage
- breach of an injunction for anti-social behaviour - where the social landlord has obtained, or is party to, the injunction
- closure of a premises under a closure order - for example where a property has been used for drug dealing.
It is estimated that the Courts make 3,000 eviction orders for anti-social behaviour against social tenants each year. According to the Government, survey data indicates that it takes on average seven months from applying for a possession order to being granted one.
A consultation seeking views on these proposed powers can be accessed here.
(Thanks to Councilor Canver for the heads up on this one).
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Is this really a good thing? Won't it cost more money?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Is it a good thing? I assume you've read the consultation paper. What are your views, John?
Won't it cost more money? Than what, John? Than doing nothing? Or dealing with the misery caused to neighbours? In some cases, when the Council has evicted its tenants, a central aim was actually to remove vulnerable people from a situation they were unable to manage.
But there are several questions which concern me. Including:
* If and when will this apply to private landlords and their tenants?
* Is it "collective punishment" - for instance punishing a whole family for the behaviour of one member?
* I've never been comfortable with the term "anti-social behaviour". English Law has a long tradition of specifying the actions and intentions of an offence. A person does need to know clearly what they are charged with. So I'm somewhat reassured to find this is at least flagged-up in the consultation paper.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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I find the mob behaviour and sometimes mass hysteria of those who felt aggrieved by the rioting and generally not affected by it rather unnerving..
It reminds me of salutations of the Viennese on the Anschluß of Austria into the German Reich in March 1938..
A country that had lost it's way looking for a way out.. Blaming everything on to one particular part of society.. and then getting very mean about it..
Years later, when everything had turned out very badly.. none of those of who celebrated could be found.. In fact, just like the French, who of course were all in the resistance, most Austrians also had never been in favour of the n+zi party.
I really wish people would just open their eyes and see where the country is heading..
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About the riots, yes, there are very worrying group processes involved, Stephen. And I suspect that the processes underway are polarizing different groups - pushing people even further away from a needed dialogue with one another. In other words the "blame" is not just one way.
Which is why I was keen to read Cass Sunstein's books: "Going to Extremes"; and On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done. And his essay on Echo Chambers.
What I observe is parallel echo chambers. Discussions among like-minded groups who reinforce, validate, repeat and amplify the views of others they tend to agree with. While ignoring and dismissing alternative views.
Please bear in mind as well that while Mr Shapps and his colleagues are latching on to the most punitive impulses of their voters, they have no need to invent the behaviour they cite in support of their arguments.
I don't recognise your description of "mass hysteria". Yes there is deep anger. And grief as well. But many of the people who are angry about the riots were very much personally affected. They live where it happened.
Perhaps you can find time to hop a plane and come and listen to some of them.
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Hysteria..? Of course there was! The Social Housing debate is part of that ..
Don't you think I listen to the radio and TV Alan? OK, I accept I don't listen to people 'on the street' like you do.. But nor do many of those that post here or those who try and push through all these new measures.
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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I am sure that the variety of instant posted reaction here on HOL, including the hang'em&flog'em variety, proves one thing: HOL is much more representative of the 'community' than it is often given credit for.
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Please tell me this is one of your more obscure 'jokes'.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I think you are wrong to link this to the riots. This kind of discussion has been going on longer than a month. We must be careful not to link every single bit of new legislation to a few days in August. The way I read this post above is that it relates to criminal activity, such as drug dealing ,which can bring a whole host of other unsavoury behaviour with it or violence against people or property committed around a property. I'm sure Alan, more than anyone, is aware of the misery that can be caused by criminal neighbours, so discussion around this shouldn't be shut down. There's more than one way for a knee to jerk, both to the right and the left. Personally, I find this constant invocation of the hang and flog 'em brigade as representative of the HOL community unhelpful. I see little evidence that people on HOL support the more extreme end of the punitive measures suggested by the right. If you want to see what the hang 'em and flog em brigade really write, take a stroll around the internet sometime, maybe to the Telegraph commentators or the Comment is Free posse and I promise you, you will return to the relative comfort of the HOL community very quickly.
Alan's two questions are very important. As so called social housing is disappearing and more and more people are pushed into the arms of the private sector, how will they be protected? There should also be harder penalties on landlords who do nothing when they are aware that criminal activity is going on from their property, at present they can get off with a slap on the wrist and frequently do. I share Alan's problem with the term anti-social behaviour, people should face their actual crime under the law and not some nebulous ill-defined charge.
Stephen, the more I study history, the more I think Hegel was wrong and Marx was right. History does have a tendency to repeat itself; we saw the tragedy and now we are seeing the farce. The parallels I see are not with Germany in the 30s but Britain in the 80s. Thatcher cleverly appropriated the feelings that the NF were exploiting, with her 'swamping' speech, thereby bringing people into the fold that were flirting with that form of extremism. Cameron tried the same trick but with not nearly the same success. So now they are going a little further back in time to create narratives around the feckless/deserving poor. Demonisation of the working class and the poor goes back to pre-Industrial Revolution and serves as a political tool to distract the middle classes. Let us also not forget how useful the Irish Immigrant was to the Victorians as a way of dividing the English poor from their Celtic brothers and sisters (you may be poor but at least you don't run barefoot and not patch your clothes, read your Engels on Manchester). Mob hysteria/behaviour and crackdowns by the state on dissension were not something invented in the 30s and have always been very much part of English life.
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Drug dealing, violence, threatening behaviour, these are already crimes. Why do we need yet another law for the state and its partners to abuse? Is it because the current laws are not being enforced? Is it too difficult to enforce them? Why is that?
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Isn't part of the problem that even if people are convicted of behaviour that is threatening to neighbours, they can simply return to the property and continue? This power strikes me as one at the end of a long process, not the beginning.
Don't get this confused with individual councils trying to evict people for riot related offences. Reading the post carefully above, the triggers suggested above, all indicate that other laws have been used and failed to stop the trouble. However, as Alan suggests, these powers should not simply be enacted on those in council houses, but be available to deal with problems in the private sector. Also as Alan also wisely says, whole families should not be evicted if the problem stems from one individual. However, there are cases where criminal gangs move into properties and use them as bases for serious criminal activity (and boy don't we know that on our street, eh?) and it is an extremely long and mentally fatiguing process to get rid of them.
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This is not right Liz. People convicted of crimes are let out before their sentence is finished and are basically on good behaviour bonds or they go straight back in. Who's not doing their job here? The Tories and Lib Dems moaned and moaned about all the stupid laws that Labour brought in and I fear that here they are doing the same thing.
At the risk of repeating myself, there are existing laws to cover truly unneighbourly behaviour. If it's not illegal, learn to live with it, if it is, have the guts to report it and bear witness.
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What Shapps is doing is speeding up a process that already exists.
Knowing from the first hand experience of two good friends that houses can simply become a living hell for their neighbours, I think what these powers are trying to cover is the types of houses which become synonymous with criminal behaviour. Individuals may come and go but the property basically is a base camp for criminal activity. A person coming out of prison on probation would not normally return to a house where criminal activity takes place, but persistant small time offenders are not put on those kinds of conditions. Neighbours can suffer for months if not years from distress caused by police raids, guns and fights, aggression and threats when they do try and 'have the guts' as you put it, as well as stress from things like noise, mess and damage to property. You should tread carefully with words like learn to live with it or have the guts. You have no idea (and thankfully nor do I) what it is truly like to live next door to organised criminal activity, a drug dealer or a brothel but there are people on this site that do and they may not be too happy with your view that they should just put up with it or that they are gutless.
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