Simply put, it's the last part of the last sentence. People sell sex and drugs for a number of reasons, but generally high on the list is because they need to.My own borough, Merton, is considering introducing a selective licensing scheme for private houses in multiple occupation in some districts. This will require the landlord to maintain the property to a certain standard. It doesn't concern me directly because I don't own HMOs, but what interested me was that the council are saying they want to do it because they think it will reduce anti-social behaviour like drug dealing and prostitution. Can anyone explain why it should have this effect? Surely the properties deteriorate because the tenants run brothels and deal drugs from them, or is it that if they had nice places to live in, they wouldn't sell sex and drugs?
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If you have a decent place to live you will have less need to get off your face all the time and shag strangers to pay for it. Does this work for everyone? No. Obviously. However it will work on a certain proportion. Is that proportion significant? Depends who you ask. Is it a justifiable investment? Depends who you ask.
I used to work in a sh*tty bit of Oldham in a big factory. It was a bloody awful place to work, we had interracial violence, drug use and dealing on and around the premises, weapons attacks, managers getting beaten up in the car park, all sorts. However the police loved us. Why? Because when our volumes went up in the months before Xmas and we hired lots of temps the crime rate in the town went down. Measurably. Firstly because by the time they had worked their balls off for us for 8 hours they were too knackered to go out burgling, stealing cars and selling drugs, but mostly because they now had some money and didn't need to bother with the burgling and all the rest. It didn't work for all of them, but it worked on enough.