Clutter Inspector Helps Hoarders Put Houses in Order

When you’re 91, Ana says, you don’t have much left to hold onto.

What she does have--mostly junk--she keeps piled to the rafters of her Pacoima home. It’s so crowded she sleeps outside, amid the refuse in her yard.

Ana is a pack rat, one of about 500 to 600 in Los Angeles, according to authorities. They are also known as hoarders, recyclers and clutterers. Several die each year in house fires that consume the odds and ends that fill their homes and their lives.

Since January, fires have killed six pack rats in the city. The latest death was in May, when a fireplace spark ignited the contents of a Canoga Park home, killing owner Marlene Dallugge, 55.

Last week, Ana got her first visit from Dennis Bogard, a Fire Department inspector.

His title is hazardous refuse abatement coordinator. But his main job is befriending pack rats and persuading them to clean up their properties before facing legal action.

“It doesn’t take a whole lot to see that these people need support,” said Bogard, 52, as he bent down to avoid a row of trash-filled plastic bags hanging from a tree at Ana’s place. “Most of them are sweet folks, and really quite intelligent. I’m just here to make sure they don’t hurt themselves or hurt others.”

Almost all pack rats live in conditions that violate county health and safety codes, officials say. They expose themselves and neighbors to respiratory illness and diseases carried by rodents and insects.

Bogard visits about 15 people a week, part of the patchwork of city and county services that seek to treat health and safety problems created by hoarders.

In rare cases, the city attorney’s office will cite a hoarder, usually when crimes are taking place on their property, or when a hoarder disregards warnings by authorities.

Bogard, formerly a paramedic, said he has worked with pack rats for five years and has about 150 active cases, ranging from the Hollywood Hills to South-Central to the San Fernando Valley.

Bogard said most of his cases involve elderly women who lived through the Depression. “It’s strange, but maybe after going through that time period, throwing away something takes on a whole new meaning,” he said.

Most pack rats suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, a little-understood mental illness, said Dianne Sands of the Tarzana-based Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Foundation of California.

They suffer from an urge to surround themselves with a “safety net” of material objects, and fear discarding anything, Sands said. For some, throwing away a slip of paper can be a “morbid, paralyzing event,” she said.

UCLA doctors have studied such pack rats for years. Dr. Sanjaya Saxena, director of the UCLA Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Research Program, said hoarders usually “never get going with plans for a cleanup. The stuff they collect piles up and piles up. They don’t know where to start.”

Saxena and his colleagues are planning a study in the fall to track physical abnormalities in the brains of hoarders. He said a combination of drug treatment and therapy is used to treat hoarders.

Bogard says most refuse help. “They’re strong-willed, individualistic,” he said.

Bogard’s visit is sometimes as close to therapy as many will get. Although he is capable of ordering pack rats to court or forcing cleanup by outside contractors, the inspector said he would rather use persuasion.

“It’s the best way to reach them,” he said. He has talked many hoarders into cleaning up on their own.

“Dennis has a natural empathy for the people he works with. Many of them trust him more than anyone else,” said Bogard’s boss, Capt. Mark Gozawa.

Bogard, a tall, lanky man with a warm demeanor, acknowledges having a soft spot for hoarders. “My mom, she was sort of a pack rat, a collector of stuff,” he said. “When I go to see these folks, sometimes they’re a bit like my mom.”

And a bit like Bogard too?

“Well, yes, I’m a collector too . . . but in a healthy way,” he said. He owns hundreds of dolls, a hobby started when his children were young. He pays hundreds of dollars for storage space to house the collection.

Walking in Ana’s yard, Bogard seemed to gain the trust of the elderly woman, who had recently kept a group of fire inspectors off her property.

“That man’s a good man for helping me,” said Ana, negotiating her way around stacks of boxes and cans. “I’m tryin’. I told him I’m going to try to be better. But you know, I got a lot of stuff.”

Then she looked out at her yard full of memories and smiled. “These are a whole lot of good things.”