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Housing Minister Chris Carter is setting up a new "Good Neighbours" programme in a bid to stop future cases similar to the Salt family's disruption of their Auckland street.
Mr Carter said he had instructed Housing New Zealand to form a programme to build good neighbourly relations so problems could be nipped in the bud.
The programme would include a look at anti-social behaviour initiatives in the United Kingdom, which rely on neighbours to collect evidence and report bad behaviour.
The UK's anti-social behaviour scheme, introduced in 1999, is designed to deal with problems ranging from nuisance neighbours and intimidating groups taking over areas such as shopping centres, to people who don't pick up after their dogs, vandalism, graffiti and dumping rubbish or cars.
Mr Carter said his request was prompted by HNZ's difficulties in dealing with Sharon Salt's family at her state house in Owairaka, after constant complaints from neighbours about gang activity, intimidation and repeated police call-outs.
This week the Tenancy Tribunal ruled against HNZ, which had tried to evict Sharon Salt, criticising it for failing to present any concrete, specific evidence of bad behaviour by the Salts, and failing to properly document and follow up on complaints.
HNZ is deciding whether to appeal the decision.
Mr Carter said a new programme would include ways to "promote good neighbourly relations" by a greater presence of tenancy managers in communities, especially in high-concentration State housing areas.
He said it might alert HNZ to problems in communities earlier and ensure they could manage such problems quickly.
However, National housing spokesman Phil Heatley said HNZ had been alerted to the problems in the Salts' street early, but had failed to act.
He said it should do more frequent inspections of State houses if it wanted to pick up on problems earlier.
State houses face six-monthly formal inspections, one by an HNZ inspector and another by an external auditor.
Mr Heatley said most private landlords and rental property managers did inspections every three months.
"Having such big gaps between inspections puts Housing NZ out of touch with their tenants and the neighbourhoods they are in. I know most tenants are good, but to catch the rat bags, the troublesome ones, you've got to visit them more often. How can you gauge what's going on in your state houses if you don't visit regularly?"
A spokesman for Mr Carter said in practice state housing managers visited many houses more frequently than just for inspections to deal with maintenance and other issues.
Under the UK scheme, non-legally binding "anti-social contracts" can be made, listing outlawed behaviour.
In more extreme cases, anti-social behaviour "orders" can ban someone from continuing with a certain activity, spending time with named individuals or visiting specific areas. Breaches of these orders can mean time in jail.
If problems continue, police can close down houses or businesses.
