We generalize the family of $(σ, ρ)$-problems and locally checkable vertex partition problems to their distance versions, which naturally captures well-known problems such as distance-$r$ dominating set and distance-$r$ independent set. We show that these distance problems are XP parameterized by the structural parameter mim-width, and hence polynomial on graph classes where mim-width is bounded and quickly computable, such as $k$-trapezoid graphs, Dilworth $k$-graphs, (circular) permutation graphs, interval graphs and their complements, convex graphs and their complements, $k$-polygon graphs, circular arc graphs, complements of $d$-degenerate graphs, and $H$-graphs if given an $H$-representation. To supplement these findings, we show that many classes of (distance) $(σ, ρ)$-problems are W[1]-hard parameterized by mim-width + solution size.