to think housing associations should have more accountability who they choose to allocate homes to.

[JenniferBooth]

DH and i have lived in a top storey block of flats in a two storey block since October 1994.
1994 to 1998 Elderly lady lived underneath us. No problems or complaints. Lovely woman We even used to exchange Christmas cards.
1998 to 2017. Single man lived underneath. Really nice man Again no problems or complaints Unfortunately died in the flat at Easter 2017

Empty for a year.
2018 to 2019 Drug dealer who used to argue with his girlfriend and i used to hear things being thrown around.

Flat empty between summer 2019 and Feb 2022
Feb 2022 to present day now we have an abusive alcoholic underneath us who bangs on the ceiling if i so much as move. Our flat is carpeted and rugged. NO laminate flooring. He called me a cunt when i left the flat to go out one Thursday morning. He also called me a cunt when i took out some recycling yesterday afternoon. I went for a pee at 1.30 this morning and he chanted You fat cunt You fat cunt You fat cunt three times at me through the bathroom floor.
His mum provides him with money and food due to his habit
As ive already posted we have never had this kind of crap before and we have been here nearly 29 years. HAs need to be more accountable especially when these decisions affect other tenants

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz so you live in a diverse area with a wide variety of people amongst which some are rather dodgy/anti social behaviour.

Big deal, clap clap - so do a lot of us. I do.
That is absolutely not the same as living directly next door/underneath someone who is for whatever reason a difficult neighbour. I live in a diverse area but have at the moment got wonderful neighbours. But I havent in the past and I may not in the future if any of the current ones move. A difficult household (or several even) around the corner is entirely not the same as having them directly next door (which is a possibility in nice neighbourhoods as well as in not so nice - Ive experienced that too)
@JenniferBooth sympathies I totally get it. You've lived there a long time and have been happy up until about 5 years ago. Ive no suggestions but I hope you can find a solution soon.

Re the alcoholism- are the HA or police allowed to tell the local supermarkets so it becomes more difficult for him to get alcohol? Has his mum got space for him to live in, so the HA would not be evicting him knowing he has nowhere to go?

It sounds awful for you and you should complain to the HA. Hopefully they'll act. Could you speak to your neighborhood policing team? I know they're supposed to be able to deal with harassment, and you might meet the criteria for that.

I don't know what the broader answer is though as presumably even terrible people should be housed somewhere? Short of bringing back workhouses for them, where do we put them?

YANBU. I had a similar neighbour, when I complained I was told the HA thought this would happen and they knew it was a nice street but they had to put him somewhere.

It was years of misery, police visits, stress. I was close to moving and then he died, I'm quite happy to say I was ecstatic.

Every time an incident happens, take a written note of everything with date and time, every time call the police and ask for an incident number. Every time contact the HA.
Does the council have an anti social behaviour investigation team ASBIT?
Zero tolerance towards anti social scum.

The concept of social housing was to "replicate the village street, with the doctor next to the ploughman, the vicar by the shop assistant." Ideal then, but now councils house gimps, chimps and blimps next the normal people, and the council leaders, hand wringers and social workers, do gooders all live well away from the Losers.

Nail on the head. This type of accommodation isn't suitable for the anti-social neighbour - they aren't getting the support they need. They need specialist accomodation. And the lack of this has ramifications for everyone else. It's really not ok.

Saying we should be inclusive misses the point. Inclusivity is increasingly a byword for put up and shut up and accept a lack of resources for people who need social support for additional needs or quite frankly putting in prison. It's about unmet needs by government and local government which comes at the expense of others.

I have a set of violent bullying criminals who abuse mine and everyone else's property, and me when it suits, so get it. As well as the occupants, the visiting fathers and so called 'gardeners' & 'decorators' ('have machete will cut down jungle/rip out neighbors fences, nick paint from work', in exchange for drugs, sex etc,) and serious dogs, make life scary for everyone.
Prison, court and CP, are all occupational hazards to them and their bigger issue is tracking down who 'grassed them up.' Just one family and friends, demanding everyone else lives by their standards. Abh, Gbh, violent assault and police on blues and twos on our road, has gone from rare unlucky instances of mugging or burglary gone wrong, to common place events.

Police play cat and mouse with them knowing little meaningful will happen in court, and advise us to keep our heads down. Little point in complaining to HA any more as it's immediately turned into supposed 'neighborhood dispute' with the implication that others have somehow done something wrong to deserve what's meted out to them, and then we have to live with the repercussions of causing trouble for the aggressors.

Water flooding from above and sewage flooding are also turned into 'neighborhood disputes' rather than maintenance and repair issues. Set all the tennants against each other and increase 'social intervention' teams, rather than using rent to cover repairs.
Lots of methods used to dissuade tenants from complaining about poor conditions, and bad repairs.

It's the symptom of HA's treating tenants as cash cow caretakers for the business assets they own and increasing market growth, rather than seeing themselves as landlords with responsibility to tenants, who shouldn't put growth over their ability to manage.
As HA's they get away with stuff private landlords can't, the council bows to them turns a blind eye to conditions, no one wants to know, and the bigger they and their assets grow.

Roosmarjin · Yesterday 18:26

And where would people like your current neighbour live?

Well not in a lovely spacious flat with well-behaved families!

They should be put together in a block or in hostels with appropriate wardens/security to stop major antisocial behaviour.

People like this destroy lives.

I used to live on a mixed estate. It had full ownership, shared ownership (managed by housing association) and housing association only properties. For the most part it worked well. It socially is better in my opinion. However at times over the years, there were problems with the HA tenants. Regularly police and neighbours had a nightmare. The Housing Association were absolutely useless. We were in shared ownership and dealing with the HA was a total nightmare so had real sympathy for the other HA tenants and it used to piss me off rotten that there was a certain snobbery locally amongst some about the estate. I used to put those people firmly in their place. It was the HA failing to tackle the issues that made issues worse that they should. Eventually the police stopped as the tenant left.

I now live in a private house. It's right next door to a council estate. And there's a rented property opposite. For the most part the council estate is fine - there was an issue with one house which ended up minus a front door and the tenants being replaced which I didn't know the full story too (house is less that 25 m from mine) but nothing else. The most problems are currently with the rented house. One of the kids has issues and has anti-social behaviour issues. He's at a school to deal with his issues. There's regularly a police car outside the house. We've not had dealings with them but one of my friends (who lives in the council houses) has talked with the Dad. He's really good about things which is a relief.

But I am aware that it's luck. And housing associations don't care and are fucking useless. Reasonable requests were ignored and not dealt with (eg 'we've just bought the other half of our house please can you ensure your records are updated properly as we no longer pay rent' only to get threats of court for none payment of the said rent, levels of fuckwittery amongst others). My impression was that staff were just lazy and uninterested in doing their jobs more than there being a wider company desire to put profit first. It was a culture of not giving a shit rather than one of ruthless capitalism.

Brilliant 👏

RedToothBrush My impression was that staff were just lazy and uninterested in doing their jobs more than there being a wider company desire to put profit first. It was a culture of not giving a shit rather than one of ruthless capitalism.

Staff being "just lazy and uninterested in doing their jobs" tends to be the tail of the 'we're more interested in property developing' HA snake IMO.

TBF I'm not sure it's generally laziness, (though obviously you know yours) IME the culture of "not giving a shit" runs deeper than laziness, and some staff definitely do actually care, but feel their hands are tied. They definitely feel they are treated poorly from above and daily by tenants.