Social Housing, Antisocial Behaviour and Risk: The Challenges of UK Disability Equality Law

Examines ASB, social housing and disability equality policy as well as ASB case law where disability challenges have been raised.

• Analyses empirical findings from the author’s original research with social landlords to illustrate how housing officers’ medicalised and moral understandings of disability and risk affect their decision-making about ASB and how these shape different outcomes for perpetrators
• Recommends further research on particular types of ASB especially hoarding and clashes of lifestyle as well as judicial constructions of disability and the impact on ASB litigation
• The recommendations for policy are reform of equalities legislation, better support for individual perpetrators and measures to improve relations between social landlords and medico-welfare agencies involved in ASB control

This book presents an analysis of relevant developments in antisocial behaviour (ASB), social housing and disability equality law and policy. Using an empirical study of social landlord organisations, which includes detailed analysis of case files, a review of their policies, as well as focus groups and interviews with managers and officers, it shows how housing professionals operate in this framework.

This analysis provides an in-depth account of how housing professionals make medical, moral and risk-based judgements and assessments of perpetrators they know or suspect to have mental health or learning difficulties. It explains how these factors inform the process of managing complaints about ASB arguing that they lead to different outcomes for occupants of social housing.

The importance of the book relates to housing officers’ constructions of disability and their potentially discriminatory consequences: officers’ minimal compliance with equality law or extraordinary treatment may correspondingly result in social exclusion or inclusion.