Figures released by HouseMark have revealed that social landlords spent a whopping £325 million trying to resolve anti-social behaviour. This is up on last year’s figure of £300 million, which indicates that anti-social behaviour is becoming more of a problem in the rental sector.
Tragic Consequences of ASB
Dealing with anti-social behaviour is all part of being a landlord. Excessive noise is far and away the biggest problem reported, but there are many others. Some tenants are abusive to their neighbours; in other cases tenants have to deal with abuse from other residents.
One of the saddest cases of anti-social behaviour in recent years was when Suzanne Dow, a gifted academic, was driven to suicide after putting up with years of horrendous abuse from her neighbour, a social housing tenant. Despite repeated calls for help, local housing officers failed to do anything constructive to tackle the problem.
Lessons Learned
In the wake of the Suzanne Dow case, and many others besides, housing associations and councils need to start taking anti-social behaviour complaints a lot more seriously. The HouseMark report indicates that social landlords were able to resolve 9/10 cases of anti-social behaviour, which is good news for tenants.
However, a recent amendment to the ASB bill, which would have extended protection from ASB to all tenants, was defeated in parliament this month. This leaves social landlords unable to protect tenants from abusive neighbours living in private rental accommodation and although the government has promised to look further into the issue of ASB, there has been no indication of when this might happen.
