City Cleans Up Yard of ‘Trash Collector’ : Man Amasses Truckloads of Debris

Don Hyatt Martin not only didn’t like to throw anything way, he apparently liked to collect other people’s trash, as well.

But when his collection of appliances, tires, lumber, newspapers and boxes of junk filled up his back yard and the inside of his house in the 11000 block of Hatteras Street, officials said, in effect, enough is enough.

City sanitation workers Monday were on their eighth day of hauling away truckloads of debris from the house, which with its peeling paint and bare-dirt front yard stands out in the otherwise quiet and tidy North Hollywood neighborhood.

The haul is expected to reach 500 cubic yards by the time the cleanup is finished Wednesday. Among the trash--which reached a height of eight to 10 feet in the back yard--were 300 gallons of paint that was still liquid and another 700 gallons that had dried. There were large items such as refrigerators with decaying food inside and small boxes containing broken pieces of rope and loose pieces of colored wires.

He even had six extra city-issued trash cans among the debris.

Los Angeles City Fire Inspector Michael A. Theule of the department’s Bureau of Fire Prevention, who is overseeing the cleanup, said it was the third time since the mid-1980s that city officials have had to clean up Martin’s house. He said city crews have also had to clean up 10 lots owned or controlled by Martin.

Theule said Martin told officials that friends dropped things off at the house and never retrieved them. The inspector said, though, there were indications that Martin collected trash others had discarded.

Officials said that Martin--who could not be reached for comment and apparently does not live in the house--previously served a jail sentence for failing to clean up the property.

Each time the city has cleaned up Martin’s debris, Theule said, few items of value were found.

“This particular case is unusual in that we usually find salvageable material among (other people’s) junk,” Theule said. “In this case, it was mostly trash and debris.”

Meanwhile, a friend of Martin’s--who was also present Monday salvaging what he could from the back yard--said Martin’s pack rat habits hurt no one.

“Who cares why he was collecting it?” asked the man, who declined to give his name. “A man has a right to do what he wants on his property as long as he is not hurting anyone. If you don’t have that right, then you don’t own the property any more.”

But Theule said the Fire Department sees Martin’s hoard as a potential fire and health danger. “We killed six large rats and saw at least a dozen more scurry away,” he said. “They have to go somewhere, and that will probably be someone else’s yard.”

Theule said that a court order declared the property a public nuisance and Martin was ordered to clean it up. But Martin did not comply, and so the city decided to clean it up for him and then bill him for the cost, which is expected to run $15,000 to $20,000.

No criminal charges are expected, Theule said.

Theule said Martin has never given a reason for collecting the trash.

Kirk Murphy, a staff psychiatrist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, said many things can cause a person to hoard, including confusion, but it could also be caused by an obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, which he defined as “a repetition of thoughts or deeds which serves the purpose of keeping anxiety at bay.”

“People with OCD have difficulty regulating the termination of behavior,” he said. “Obsessive thoughts recur for no good reason. Individuals may find that they have a need to remain in possession of objects. It is anxiety-driven.”

By coincidence, another high-profile pack rat case was in Van Nuys Municipal Court on Monday. Terry Knutson, 41, a professional clown known as “Clownzo,” was sentenced to 180 days in County Jail for continuing to ignore a 1992 court order to fully clean up his North Hills property.

Knutson, who was immediately taken into custody, had already served an eight-month sentence last year for ignoring the order.

Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek, who prosecuted Knutson, said that the difference between the Knutson and Martin cases is that Martin had been jailed before without much success in getting him to keep his property clean.

“With Martin, I felt there was no hope of having the court enforce the order so we went another avenue,” Cocek said. “We have a lot of pack rat cases that get resolved because people don’t want to go to jail. Mr. Knutson has chosen to go another way, but one way or another we are going to get his property cleaned up.”