The Role of Social Housing in the ‘Care’ and ‘Control’ of Tenants with Mental Health Problems

Social housing is at the intersection of two policy agendas, namely anti-social behaviour and community care. This means that tenants with mental ill-health might at once be defined as vulnerable and in need of support to enable them to live independently, but simultaneously their behaviour may be viewed as a threat to the safety of others serving to legitimatise disciplinary and punitive forms of intervention on the grounds of ‘difference’. This paper focuses on the role of housing professionals in the management of cases of ASB involving people with mental ill-health. It argues that housing practitioners are not adequately equipped to make judgements on the culpability of ‘perpetrators’ who have mental ill-health and ensure their response is appropriate. This raises questions about the training housing officers recieve, and more broadly, whether the competing policy aims of community care and ASB can be reconciled.

PROBLEMS AND POTENTIALS OF SHELTERED HOUSING

Alex Marsh and Moyra Riseborough, Making Ends Meet: Older People, Housing Association Costs and the Affordability of Rented Housing, National Federation of Housing Associations, London, 1995, 93 pp., no price, ISBN 0 862 97307 4.Anthea Tinker, Fay Wright and Hannah Zeilig, Difficult to Let Sheltered Housing, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1995, 174 pp., £17.50, ISBN 0 113 21964 4.Moyra Riseborough (ed.), Opening-up the Resources of Sheltered Housing to the Wider Community, Anchor Studies 3, Anchor Housing Association, Oxford, 1995, 32 pp., £7.50, ISBN 0 906 17827 4.Bill Randall, Staying Put: The Best Move I'll Never Make, Anchor Housing Association, Oxford, 1995, unpaginated, £5.99, ISBN 0 906 17829 0.For the last twenty years sheltered housing has dominated debates about housing and old age in Britain. There have recently been signs that its pre-eminent position may be threatened by the wider agenda stimulated by the community care reforms. But just when we thought the whole debate had run out of steam, back comes sheltered housing to dominate the policy debate and to re-capture the attention of housing officers. The nature of the debate now differs: gone are the heated discussions over whether sheltered housing is the answer to all our problems; rather, the key question is what to do with the increasing number of ‘difficult-to-let’ sheltered housing flats. Does this mean that the sceptics (including myself) were right all along and that sheltered housing really was ill-thought out and over-provided? After all, the main defence against these charges was that it was popular. Have older people turned against it too?