Eviction of families from local authority, or housing association accommodation on conviction of any family member being involved in riot-related offences.

[Pan]

This has triggered a wide-ranging debate on the reasonableness of this measure. What we do know is that entire families are now liable to homelessness due to the actions of one person in the family. The tactic used to enable this is the commonly-applied clause to be of 'good behaviour'. This is designed to protect other tenants in the vicinity from anti-social behaviour. We know that approx. 70% of offenders here do not live in that vicinity. LAs DO NOT accept responsibility for abti-social behaviour in other boroughs.

The proposed actions are discriminatory against LA/HA tenants per se (as compared with owner-occupiers/private tenants, and will fall hardest on single parent mothers with sons who have offended recently.

Is it reasonable to ask MN to use their voice/influence to raise a public campaign against these measures before a case precedent is established that can be used by LA/HAs to assist in their evictions policy?

I support this because I think that in blaming "parenting" in allowing these evictions, the slack is going to be disproportionately taken up by women. A great many of those in this situation are likely to be single female parents. Last time I checked, it took a man and a woman to create a child and I'm not quite sure why a man going AWOL or taking no responsibility for parenting has to take no responsibility for their child's behaviour while a woman may lose her home, along with younger children.

My mother and aunts were single parents. I find it laughable that people think that it is so easy for single parents control older teenagers - my mother couldn't control my sister in an environment where my sister's behaviour was not AT ALL condoned, she just didn't even know where to start despite having a barrelload of education etc and it would be ludicrous to suggest that she could have just barricaded her in her room (and even this, quite frankly, wouldn't have stopped my sister). My aunt managed her son when he turned to drugs and petty crime by sending him to boarding school - clearly not an option that's available for the average single mum on a council estate. Neither my aunt nor my mother chose to be single parents and neither do a great number of women struggling to keep their kids on the straight and narrow.

Pan, good for you for starting this thread.

I'm against evicting people because it's double punishment. Why should council or HA tenants suffer twice when owner-occupiers are only punished once? The person who is guilty of a crime - once they have been found guilty - is punished by the court. And that should be the end to it (although of course the conviction may be relevant to their employment, education or other role).

Well this is a bit healthy isn't it?

Rowan indicates MNHQ are seeing how things develop and Olivia tells me they will look at this issue more closley when they are all back in the office on Monday.

So I guess the only thing to do is to keep posting support for this, and have the fair debate about the justice and practicalities of this measure.

The first case is due at Crown Court next week (I think - not seen any news today - posting and gardening) and it would be fabulous if the Civil Court judge in any case following a conviction rules against this nasty little application of a clause which wasn't designed for this purpose.

I am sure this has been said already but how can MP's STEAL £££££ from the tax payers, bankers get awarded £££££ and yet recieve no punishment?? A youth stealing a bottle of water gets a 6 months prision sentence - something is seriously wrong somewhere.
I fully support this campaign.

It's not easy to find landlords who accept HB...

to be slightly fair trying, a few MPs and a couple of Lords are serving time for their thefts. But yes the scale and proportionality is absurd, tho' this thread is focussing on proposed eviction of familes.

no crooked MPs kids in homeless hostels though.

If anyone is versed in the dark arts of twittering, is it an idea to mention all of this by that method? < I am now at the very boundaries of my tweeting knowledge now >

also, I did spend a chunk of my early working years working in hostels for the homeless. The utter devastation that is wreaked on lives by having nowhere to live, or being moved away from your social support people where you have decades of a build up of attachments is profound. If we can help stop this needless, unjust and vindictive measure it would be time well spent.

On balance I support this thread. Deciding factors: 1. it is not only a double punishment for the individual but also punishing family members. 2. the legislation being used is intended to be for families that are disturbing their immediate neighbours and not just on a one-off basis of nicking something from a shop which could be 5 miles away. 3. Those whose mortgages are held by banks that are being subsidised by the tax payer are no differnt to those in social housing and there is no suggestion they should be thrown out of their homes. 4. I am sick and tired of the suggestion that people in social housing are responsible for all the problems in the UK. They are not!

nice summation of the relevant points Gill! and with such brevity!

Thanks Pan. I could rant on believe me :)

Good luck with this.

I don't agree it should be the case in every circumstance, but I do think it should be an option.

I live on an estate which is generally lovely. But in the past year we've had several families have to move out because they've been the targets of racial hatred.

Round the corner there is a family who have been charged with committing racially aggravated GBH and have ASBO's stating that they are only allowed onto and off the estate, via a certain route which didn't pass the home of any of the target families.

Families are still being targeted, the Police are almost certain from the descriptions we've given that it's the same family but they don't have the evidence to prove it (they keep dodging the CCTV on the homes of the people being targeted.)

The Housing Association have no power to get rid of them because the tenancy is in the parents name. These aren't young children, they're in their late teens and 20's.

I support this. It is the job of the courts to punish those who are guilty of a crime. It is not the job of the LA/HAs, particularly when it affects innocent and perhaps vulnerable people.

I support this. It is the job of the courts to punish those who are guilty of a crime. It is not the job of the LA/HAs, particularly when it affects innocent and perhaps vulnerable people.

yes biblio - that sounds awful and I know from experience how troublesome it can be to secure evidence of such stuff that will hold up in court. I do know that LA/HAs don't need a criminal conviction t oeffect an eviction. A very good friend of mine deals wit hthis sort of occurence as his business. He is aghast at the ignorance, or lack of will by some authorities to actually use the measures they have at their disposal to deal with these cases. The estate owners/landlords need to have a word with him!

Yes, eviction in some cases is entirely justified - what we are looknig at here is a blanket rule to evict all families who have nothing to do with the offending behaviour.

I generally support the campaign, but not sure about the double punishment argument. There are many consequences of a criminal conviction, so it is never a single punishment anyway.

pan it's not a blanket rule to evict all.

We do not know all the circumstances of this household. We do not know where the alleged offences took place relative to their home. We have seen only one eviction procedure being started - and given that Wandsworth was itself hit by rioting, that is strongly suggestive of the absence of a blanket policy.

Gill g whose mortgages are being subsidised by the tax payer? Miras was abolished about 20 years' ago or do you mean people who are out of work who can't pay their mortage?

meditrina - from the words of the Wandsworth Council, as i read it, it is a blanket rule - 'if anyone in your household is convicted of a riot-related offence then we will move to evict the family'. It doesn't specify at all where the offence took place.

If I am mistaken then I am happy to withdraw that 'blanket' thing.

But the case still remains - even if a person in a Wandsworth household convicted of a riot-related offence commited in Wandsworth, then all of the familiy would still be eligible for eviction. Which brings us back to the point of this being a twisted application of the good beviour rule which was not intended for 'one-off' or first offence circumstance.

I do take the point you make though.

I suspect Gill's point is that if you are borrowing from RBS, for example, ultimately you are borrowing from the taxpayer. The taxpayer rescued RBS when it was bankrupt. So those of us with RBS mortgages are just as much a client of the state as those in social housing. (I have to say, as someone who banks with RBS, the words 'listen, sunshine, you do realise that I'm a taxpayer and therefore one of the owners of this heap of shite you call a bank' have sprung to mind once or twice. But I wouldn't say it out loud because that would be rude. And the people who work there are equal owners and all that.)

edam - my mortgage is with RBS. The 'listen sunshine..' words have entered my brain on a couple of occassions...

They also say they will be considering each case to decide whether to take action. So no blanket, other than to enter the frame for consideration.

Count me in too, please.

All my potential rants covered above!

It's odd, this extremist policy from Wandsworth. When I lived near Clapham Junction, Wandsworth council was doing jack shit about the crack dens in the notorious estate right by the station. (That was where So Solid Crew came from - the cabbies used to say 'they don't give me any trouble, I know their Mums' )

Think we as a country need to be very careful of knee jerk reactions.

Tis all from me.