Councillors back renewed focus on serious anti-social behaviour in council complexes

Dublin city councillors on Tuesday welcomed an overture from officials to set up a new working group to tease out how the council responds to “anti-social behaviour” in social housing complexes.

“I think we’re all very conscious that anti-social behaviour is something that we in Dublin City Council need to get on the front foot in relation to,” said Frank D’Arcy, executive manager in housing operations, at the meeting of the housing committee.

Officials want input from councillors on what the working group should consider as priority, said Mick Mulhern, assistant chief executive, at the same meeting. “We know there are issues.”

Council officials had statistics to hand from the past year of managing tens of thousands of social homes in the city.

Some figures were laid out in a written presentation, such as the number of complaints, which sat at 2,415 last year.

Others were dropped in during the debate.

“I had six cases, I’m now down to three, where families are burned out, said Mick Clarke, of the estate management unit at the meeting.

Most councillors’ comments and questions sought tougher and faster responses from the council, and the judicial system, to the most serious breaches of tenancies and criminal activity – drug-related intimidation, racism, burning people out of homes.

Cieran Perry, an independent councillor, said he sees anti-social behaviour in council housing as the biggest issue facing the council after housing supply.

It reflects on social housing and leads people to reject it, he said. “We’re all here fighting for public housing.”

Mike Allen, head of advocacy for Focus Ireland, who is a member of the committee, said he agreed with councillors and council officials as to the importance of this issue for the future of social housing.

But he doesn’t think it’s possible to deal with everything they may come across – racism, drugs, interaction with the criminal justice system – through estate management by the council, he said.

And when the council moves to evict someone, it is just evicting them into the homeless accommodation system, he said, where it is even harder to manage anti-social behaviour.

“I’m not saying we should be soft on it,” Allen said. But they all need to think it all through, he said.

The process

Complaints around anti-social behaviour in social housing complexes are dealt with first-off by the council’s 11 local area offices, said Mick Clarke, an official in the council’s estate management unit.

They are assigned a level of seriousness – low, middle, or high – and the most serious are referred on to the central estate-management unit to handle, he said.

If after investigation, council staff find a breach of the tenancy based on behaviour, the council issues either a verbal warning, or a written warning, and then a final written warning, said Claire Dempsey, who works in the estate management unit.

Once a final written warning has been given, the estate management unit reviews the case to make sure that it has been handled correctly, and then it goes forward for the next step, she said – which is either a tenancy warning (which brings particular consequences), an exclusion order, or a possession order.

For any possession order – essentially an eviction – the council must prove in court that it is equitable, proportionate, reasonable, and justifiable, she said.

Last year, 103 severe cases were escalated to the central unit, 12 went forward with formal tenancy warnings, and for three possession orders were granted.

So far this year in relation to those, there have been eight tenancy warnings, and one exclusion order for an adult subtenant, she said.

Part of the estate management unit’s remit is to make sure that area offices understand the council’s strategy around anti-social behaviour and the relevant legislation, she said.

They’re always looking to improve on what they do, she said, and the idea of the working group is to feed into the next anti-social behaviour strategy.

Janice Boylan, a Sinn Féin councillor, asked if people can report issues anonymously. It’s tough for a neighbour to go into the council and sign a statement against the person they live beside, she said.

Clarke said the council takes complaints in any format and without names – and has been to court to defend that. “We would gladly take them anonymously.”

Boylan also said she sees a reluctance at times among council staff to deal with anti-social behaviour because of intimidation, she said. “Everyone is human.”

But it can escalate if not dealt with, she said.

It’s difficult as staff has been threatened, said Clarke. Some even have had pipe bombs left under their cars, he said.

Management do try to do everything they can to help any staff affected by that, he said.

There’s a process now in place, he said. “We’re satisfied that we can come to the aid of any member who feels they are in threat.”

Most don’t want to leave the council or the housing department, he said.

The council also has an approach for dealing with what happens when a family is burnt out of their home, said Clarke.

Let’s say they are burnt out of Cabra, he said, choosing a neighbourhood at random. “They’re not going back into Cabra.”

Gardaí advise them on whether they think the person would be a target if they moved back in, he said.

But they have a duty of care to both those residents and to the community as a whole, he said.

Families have told him that they feel punished when they are moved, he said. But the council doesn’t want to take any chances, he said, and will move them outside of what they consider the danger area.

Teasing out priorities

Independent Councillor Christy Burke said he remembered a time it had taken eight years to get an eviction in Ballybough.

The new working group should invite the president of the District Court to talk to them, so they can outline the impacts that serious anti-social behaviour have on a neighbourhood, he said.

“Our problem here is the courts,” said Burke.

Officials work day and night on cases, which end up taking years through the courts, said Burke. “That’s where the delay is.”

Perry, another independent councillor, backed him up.

He takes serious issue with the underlying legislation, he said. That personal drug use at home isn’t anti-social behaviour, and that the behaviour has to be within the vicinity of a tenancy to be relevant.

He, like other councillors, honed in on evictions as a consequence.

“We should be publicising when we evict people,” he said. “Everyone involved in this feels like there’s no consequences.”

The number of tenancy warnings suggested to him that estate management wasn’t resourced properly, he said. “I think you are understaffed.”

Allen, of Focus Ireland, said that councillors have two roles, as he sees it.

They’re social landlords, but also must reflect the community more broadly, he said. “And I think there is less of a concentration on that role – and what influence councillors may have on that.”

Hazel de Nortúin, a People Before Profit councillor, said that she could feed in the lessons that were learnt from a pilot project she helped to run in Dublin 10 to help with chronic cases of intimidation.

One finding was that keeping the circle of those involved small was best, she said, to move fast.

She also raised the importance of the need to consider domestic violence cases.

D’Arcy said this would definitely be something for the working group. They plan to set it up within the next month, he said.

And once they have a strategy worked out, that should mean more resources going forward too, said D’Arcy.