SPACES OF MISUNDERSTANDING?

Disparity and conflict between national policy making and local

housing management post-2011 riots

Gareth Young Department of Town and Regional Planning

University of Sheffield

SETTING THE SCENE

About this research

Housing policy pre and post-2011 riots

Housing, the riots and citizenship

ABOUT THIS RESEARCH

‘Beyond the Riots’ White Rose DTC, exploring ‘housing tenure and urban unrest’

Data collected from semi-structured interviews and through

media analysis

Practitioner and stakeholder interviews conducted in East London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands

On-going analysis, chapter drafting and refining key

arguments

(EMERGING) KEY ARGUMENTS: FRAMING SOCIAL HOUSING IN RESPONSE TO

THE 2011 RIOTS

Utilization of the riots to frame and enhance wider governmental agendas

Limited evidence base to support the social housing narrative

Disjuncture between media-political responses, ‘official’

government responses and on the ground practices

Dangers of further stigmatization and marginalization of certain communities and vulnerable citizens

Where has this come from?

“Creeping conditionality” in housing policy

HISTORY OF HOUSING POLICY

1970s - 1980s: Home ownership aspiration and market control (Privatization of housing, Right to Buy, council

stock moving to voluntary housing associations, introduction of grounds for possession)

1990s - 2000s: Rights and responsibilities (Introductory

(probationary) tenancies, control over eviction at the discretion of the landlord, Injunctions, responsibility over

family and visitors, benefit sanctions)

2010 onwards: Social mobility and deservedness (flexible tenancies, PRS used to meet homelessness duty)

HOUSING POLICY POST-2011 RIOTS

Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: •  Behaviour towards a landlord •  Adult, or household member, involved in riots (England

only)

“Many rioters chose to move out of the locality in which they lived in order to do damage in neighbouring areas. We are therefore taking action to enable landlords to impose housing sanctions on tenants and members of their household where they choose to wreck other people’s local communities as well as their own. Following consultation, we have included provisions in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill to enable landlords to seek to evict tenants where they or members of their households are convicted of riot related offences, committed anywhere in the UK” (DCLG, 2013, 27)

“Parents have a responsibility to control the young people living in their home. If young people living in your home have been involved in the violence over the past few days, they are putting your tenancy at risk” (Jon Collins, Leader of Nottingham City Council, quoted by the BBC, 11 August 2011)

“What I do think can be part of solving the problem is saying to people in social housing: if you misbehave, you can be thrown out of your house…I think there may be opportunities, possibly through the new criminal justice and sentencing legislation, to make sure we are better at confiscating things from people when they commit crimes” (David Cameron, quoted by the BBC, 11 August 2011)

IMMEDIATE MEDIA-POLITICAL RESPONSES

“Housing Minister Grant Shapps said it makes sense to extend eviction powers to people who had travelled to neighbouring boroughs – or even other parts of the country – to take part in violence. He said there would still be a ‘proper judicial process’ to go through, but those who were convicted of taking part in riots should not expect ‘to receive the benefits society can bring to you” (BBC, 11 August 2011)

‘OFFICIAL’ RESPONSES “Our conclusion is that there were no single cause of the riots and that no single group was responsible. This was a view supported by the local and national reports published since our interim report. To suggest otherwise can create unforeseen problems” (Riot Communities and Victims Panel, 2012, 25) The Riots Communities and Victims Panel identified six key areas: 1.  Children and parents 2.  Building personal resilience 3.  Hopes and dreams 4.  Riots and the brands 5.  The usual suspects 6.  Police and the public Housing?

“Let us state the obvious: the riots did not start in a street of Georgian houses with spacious sash windows and manicured lawns. The riots started on a social housing estate – Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham, to be exact” (Policy Exchange, 2014)

ONGOING COMMENTARY

REMOVING CITIZENS’ RIGHTS: THE WANDSWORTH CASE

•  The eviction of Ms. de la Calva because of her son’s

involvement in the riots

•  Resident of Wandsworth, lived in the UK since 1986, occupied current property for over five years

•  Has two other children, works part time, involved in community activities, including the church.

•  Daniel Sartain-Clarke (the son) sentenced to 11 months in prison and the council still wanted to pursue a NOSP to evict Ms. de la Calva from their state-subsidized home

Housing and the riots What can the concept of citizenship lend to the understanding and analysis of this research?

IMMORALITY OF RIOTERS: WELFARE DEPENDENCY AND CITIZENSHIP

“We” are being “too soft”

Social responsibility and the notion of deservedness

Removing the right to housing for rioters

IMMORALITY OF RIOTERS: WELFARE DEPENDENCY AND CITIZENSHIP

“Perhaps this time around, it is not just society which has failed the riot generation, but their own families. Gavin Poole, of the Centre for Social Justice says these youngsters may be a “lost generation” facing life on benefits in ghettos scarred by poor housing and street gangs, ‘completely devoid of aspiration’. The anarchy they bring to the streets is a mere projection of the anarchy in which they have grown up. This, for them, is normal behaviour”. (Gavin Poole, CSJ quoted in the Manchester Evening News, 10 August)

HOUSING, THE RIOTS AND CITIZENSHIP

Citizenship by housing tenure

“[a perpetrator] had a wife and three children and this…mentality that a lot of perpetrators…especially men, adult men, you know, I’ve got to look after my baby and my wife type…I’m the man and I look after my family and actually, then, when we came down the line of looking at their property…he then realised that was going to impact over his ability to do things as a man he should be doing, which is a roof over his family’s head…that had the most impact that the kind of…risk of criminal sanctions” (ASB Officer, West Midlands)

“I find it bizarre that we’ve got a serving Prime Minister who is threatening to take tenancies from families who were involved in riots. If our children were involved in that we wouldn’t have done anything wrong. Neither have these people, apart from maybe living in poverty and having other worries than their 13 or 14 year old and it’s punishment on a class basis. Very clearly so”. (Youth Offending Service, East London)

HOUSING, THE RIOTS AND CITIZENSHIP

Punitive responses despite a lack of evidence

“I’m pretty confident it was the elected members shooting their mouth off and once they’ve done that, you’ve got no choice but to follow through. It’s a brave [housing] officer who turns around the elected member and says no”. (Barrister, London)

“In relation to Manchester a large amount of the people that were involved in the riots weren’t Manchester residents…a very small proportion of them were people living in the social rented sector…and of those that were identified that were involved…a very small proportion of them were young people, it was generally adults. So I do know within…the social housing world…there was a backlash to the way that politicians were coming out with political rhetoric in relation to the riots and giving an impression that it was all…because of social tenants, it was all social tenants that were causing the problem and that they needed to be brought to account and that they needed to be punished”. (ASB Officer, Greater Manchester)

HOUSING, THE RIOTS AND CITIZENSHIP

‘Conditionality’ and ‘responsibility’

“It’s a very good tool [the use of eviction]…[in] my experience it’s not overused at all especially in Manchester, because we always used it as a bit of a threat, but we always knew evicting somebody who then moves across the road to a private sector housing hasn’t solved any of the problems. So it’s about containment and it’s about using the threat of losing your council house, housing association house as the driving force for them to make some changes” (Ex-Crime and Disorder Officer, Greater Manchester)

“I used to use that tool all the time with young people. Do you know fifteen year old Jimmy that your behaviour can get you evicted? You know your 12 year old sister, she’ll be homeless because of you. You can make everyone lose their home. How’s that going to make you feel? Well, I’ll be sad. Well that’s what can happen…and that’s your responsibility” (Ex-Crime and Disorder Officer, Greater Manchester)

Spaces of misunderstanding? Discussion & concluding remarks

NATIONAL LEVEL-LOCAL LEVEL MISALIGNMENT

“It [the riots] certainly did not have [an] effect. Or it didn’t affect…or give…people responsible for housing policy…a sort of ‘oh my God, we need to change the way that we’re, you know, allocating our properties or delivering our services’…it didn’t have that sort of effect at all. It did on…the way the government reacted to ASB [laughs]…and again, talk to anyone who’s been involved in…ASB legislation and sort of dealing with ASB on the frontline, within a social housing context…we all know why some of the grounds for possession that are in the new ASB legislation are there, because that’s what the politicians thought was required at the time” (Neighbourhood Officer, Greater Manchester)

NATIONAL LEVEL-LOCAL LEVEL MISALIGNMENT

“As far as we could see one of the elected members decided to say something to the press and once they’d said that decisions were made. I never got the impression that the housing officers wanted to push it [eviction]…it’s not really in their nature to jump straight in…It’s hard to generalize, but I very rarely find housing officers want to go straight in for possession, because it’s just an indication that they’re failing as housing officers”. (Barrister, London)

THE COMPLEXITY OF THESE MISUNDERSTANDINGS

“What was happening was Manchester City Council and the police were trying to pressurize all the local housing providers, saying that your tenants are causing problems in the town, deal with them. And we were just saying well, they’re not causing us a tenancy management issue…what they’re doing was criminal behaviour, it’s a big difference” (ASB Officer, Greater Manchester)

THE COMPLEXITY OF THESE MISUNDERSTANDINGS

“The biggest job for me was coming on the Monday to work was the police had been in over the weekend and I had emails flying backwards and forwards, like literally listing people and going, right, we need to start possession proceedings against those people. So my biggest job, and my first job, was to calm the waters down a little bit and say whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a minute here, we’re not just going to go on possession based on you just submitting a name and an address, we need to actually properly look at what’s behind these”. (ASB Officer, West Midlands)

THE COMPLEXITY OF THESE MISUNDERSTANDINGS

“There was nothing bubbling under in this area that would have allowed this to be a catalyst for riots in the area…there was no other tensions. The relationship with the police is good and strong, so again, there’s no axes to grind, there’s no history, there’s no baggage in the same way there are in say Hackney or Tottenham (Housing Officer, East London)

THE GREATER MANCHESTER CASE

Manchester City Centre “consumer riots” and Salford Precinct “community riots”

“The distinction between the Salford ‘riot’ and the event in Manchester were acknowledged by the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police when he suggested that the events in Salford were about attacking the police and not in the first instance about looting” (Jeffery and Jackson, 2012, 19)

HOUSING A SYMBOLIC GESTURE

“Beyond acting as a symbolic gesture, it is not at all obvious why Ministers feel a specifically housing-related sanction is the appropriate response to non-housing related disorder. Ministers have not adequately explained why it would be appropriate for a social housing to take action “where a social tenant or a member of their household decides to wreck [sic] havoc in someone else’s community” (Shelter, 2011) “You see, I wonder if it was all part of a bigger agenda, which was the shift in social housing from being a right to being a benefit? (Lawyer, London)

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CRIMINALISING SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Removal of housing rights

Lack of evidence to support policies

Stigmatizing and advancing marginality in disenfranchised communities

Any questions, suggestions or feedback? Gareth Young University of Sheffield gjyoung1@sheffield.ac.uk

References Department for Communities and Local Government. (2013). Government Response to the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel's final report. Dwyer, P. (2000). Welfare Rights and Responsibilities: Contesting social citizenship. Bristol: The Policy Press. Dwyer, P. (2004). Creeping Conditionality in the UK: From Welfare Rights to Conditional Entitlements? The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(2), 265-287. Flint, J., & Pawson, H. (2009). Social landlords and the regulation of conduct in urban spaces in the United Kingdom. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 9(4), 415-435. Hunter, C. (2006). The changing legal framework: from landlords to agents of social control. In J. Flint (Ed.), Housing, urban governance and anti-social behaviour (pp. 137 - 153). Bristol: The Policy Press. Jeffrey, B., & Jackson, W. (2012). The Pendleton Riot: a political sociology. Criminal Justice Matters, 87(1), 18-20. Knight, G. (2014). The Estate We're in: Lessons from the Front Line. Riots Communities and Victims Panel. (2012). After the riots: The final report of the riots, communities and victims panel: London: HMSO. Shelter. (2011). Consultation Response, Department for Communities and Local Government, A new mandatory power of possession for anti-social behaviour. Taylor, P. (2011). The shameless spree of the young recreational rioters. Manchester Evening News. Retrieved from http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/paul-taylor-the-shameless-spree-of-the-young-867735

**Please note** this is a working paper and the findings are only preliminary.