It’s believed the housing sector is a highly sensitive issue in national security terms. The crimes of Southern Housing – a front entity for a crime network led by Emma Richmond and supported by other crime networks – are explained by its close networking into informal local arrangements that threaten this crucial balance.
These are the types that exist to facilitate the securing of all sorts of local activity. In Reading, many such arrangements existed before the chaos caused by Richmond and her outlaw friends.
The particular route she took included a security risk board allegedly chaired between the since-defunct Reading Prison, Reading County Court, and locally present housing associations.
It wasn’t a significant arrangement but it gave Richmond enough of a foot in the door of the local housing scene. She used it to manipulate houses out of private ownership, and take other types of accommodation into her control as part of an informal network of companies and smaller charity enterprises.
The consolidation of much of her criminal power into Southern Housing didn’t happen overnight. However, it led to a scourge of house thefts and threats to neighbourhood security across the South, and some parts of the North.
In time, millions of people have been affected by the activity of housing criminals. The notoriety of Southern Housing and its record of lawbreaking is now synonymous with many other criminal outfits.
It also encompasses unscrupulous individuals such as housing officers, office staff, and volunteers, all of whom used their position to challenge social norms and made people feel unsafe in their own homes. They may be otherwise occupied now, but their stain is on our nation’s history.
