The Casual Vacancy – J.K. Rowling

There was nothing, as far as Howard could see, to stop the Fielders growing fresh vegetables; nothing to stop them cleaning them disciplining their sinister, hooded, spray-painting offspring; nothing to stop them pulling themselves together as a community and tackling the dirt and the shabbiness; nothing to stop them cleaning themselves up and taking jobs; nothing at all.  So Howard was forced to draw the conclusion that they were choosing, of their own free will, to live the way they lived, and that the estate’s air of slightly threatening degradation was nothing more than a physical manifestation of ignorance and indolence.

[Love Pirate’s note: Howard is the head of the town council and main “villain” of the book.]