Maintaining an Arm's Length? Housing, Community Governance and the Management of ‘Problematic’ Populations

This paper examines how contemporary social problems of community care, anti-social behaviour, ethnic and racial tensions and the housing of sex offenders are conceptualised in UK housing and urban policy. It explores how and why the populations of social housing areas disproportionately bear the risks arising from these social problems, and how the responses of these populations are subsequently problematised. The redefining of social landlords' roles in managing ‘problematic’ populations is explored, and similarities in the responses to social problems in both private and social housing developments are identified, based around parochial ‘community’ forms of governance. The paper concludes that the increasing secession of local housing governance from a ‘public’ model of provision increases the ‘subsidiarity of responsibility’ upon deprived populations for managing social problems, reflecting a wider imbalance in the societal distribution of risks.