This report presents research undertaken by the AHURI Southern Research Centre to develop effective housing management policies to address problems of anti social behaviour (ASB). In recent years, public housing has increasingly become the tenure for individuals with limited incomes and a high level of social need. Furthermore, deinstitutionalisation policies in mental health provision have meant that individuals who in the past would have been provided with institutional care are now often residing in public housing. The intensive needs of many tenants result in a new set of challenges for housing managers in terms of supporting sustainable tenancies.

The term anti social behaviour is used to denote a range of activities from the very minor (such as the dropping of litter) to more extreme forms of criminal behaviour (such as burglary and harassment). Though residents who engage in ASB may be few in number, their activities have a significant negative impact on the quality of life for their neighbours. There is a wide-ranging debate about the causal factors associated with ASB. The dominant view within the Australian housing profession and academia is that ASB is a symptom of wider structural factors such as unemployment and poverty. Therefore, the most desirable policies are those that are community focused and seek to address the causal factors associated with ASB. However, there is a strand of literature based on the ‘underclass’ theory that draws upon the work of Charles Murray (1994) claiming that individual fecklessness is the root causal factor for ASB. Such underclass theories have been especially influential in informing the contemporary practices undertaken by housing authorities in the USA and, to a lesser extent, the UK.