Hoarding: When trash takes over

Spiders crawled inside a window, and large bags filled with trash, old pizza boxes, plastic soda bottles and food were stacked on top of a kitchen sink inside a South Glendale condo, but no one was home.

Plastic bags, rotting food, bowls of cat chow and endless stains littered the kitchen floor, while a hallway was covered in vomit, and cat and human feces.

The combination of excrement and spoiling food left a foul stench inside the condo.

The resident, a 48-year-old woman, hasn’t been to her East Garfield Avenue home since city officials were first alerted April 8 to the conditions inside the condo. Code inspector Che Hill said he did not know the name of the woman, who is reportedly in a hospital receiving treatment for an unknown medical condition.

Glendale police and fire officials went to the condo after neighbors reported a strong odor, saying they believed someone was dead inside, Hill said.

Hill wore a biohazard suit when he first inspected the home. He placed a yellow sign outside the home that said it was an immediate safety hazard, and that anyone who entered it must wear a biohazard suit.

“Anyone that would live in those conditions is not able to care for themselves,” Hill said.

The woman had inherited the property through a trust and has only a brother, who has refused to help her, Hill said.

The city sees about two severe hoarding cases each month, he said.

“It’s not something we deal with on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

The woman’s case would be categorized as extremely severe hoarding, said Rodney Boone, psychologist and director of Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center of Southern California. Boone has offices in Glendale and Torrance.

LEVELS OF HOARDING  

There are different phases of hoarding, he said.

It starts with normal hoarding, such as buying bulk items. Such people live in clutter but can still function, Boone said.

People who cannot function will let their bed or kitchen be overtaken with clutter, he said. They won’t use their dining room table because there is no room to sit down and eat. Some hoard animals.

Extreme hoarders often exhibit other mental illnesses and even gather trash or feces, Boone said. They often suffer from schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, Alzheimer’s or dementia.

Hoarding has been a significant problem in America since at least the Great Depression, when saving goods was for survival.

“They were the ones that put things away through famine,” Boone said.

Psychologists and therapists don’t have studies showing how common hoarding is, Boone said, though it is generally accepted that hoarding worsens as a person ages.

Family members will generally seek treatment for hoarders.

“The average hoarder doesn’t usually come to treatment on their own,” he said.

People who hoard need therapy, Boone said, and treatment can take more than a year.

“These are very difficult patterns to overturn,” Boone said.

HOARDING TASK FORCE

Hoarding became such a costly problem that Los Angeles County created a task force in 1997 devoted to helping local governments deal with the issue.

Hoarding poses health and safety risks, such as fires. Cases of hoarding are often discovered when police or fire officials are called to the home.

The task force tries to educate cities and the public on how to handle hoarding cases, how to solve them and how to get intervention for hoarders, said Danny Redmond, a senior mental health counselor and registered nurse for the county’s Department of Mental Health.

The task force has worked with Glendale and Burbank on some hoarding cases.

Cities throughout the county are generally slow in reporting problem properties, and are often quick to evict hoarders and throw away all their stuff, Redmond said. But hoarders need more help than that, he said.

“It takes a very calming approach,” Redmond said.

One person should work with a hoarder to help them go through their valuables, which could take several visits to establish trust and respect, he said.

Hoarding cases are difficult to categorize.

“It’s very hard to track,” Redmond said. “It’s not a specific diagnosis.”

The task force has held five conferences in Los Angeles County that specifically dealt with the issue of hoarding.

ATTACHED TO THEIR STUFF

Hoarders usually have trouble maintaining relationships with people, and instead have relationships with their belongings, Redmond said.

The county often discovers hoarders and conducts interventions when the seasons change, he said.

“When it starts to get warm, houses start to smell,” Redmond said, adding that neighbors usually report hoarders in the warmer months.

Families will visit their loved ones during holidays, such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, and find the home cluttered, he said.

The task force gets involved in two or three hoarding cases throughout the county per week, Redmond said.

Ten percent of the general population are hoarders, he said.

“It’s really high,” Redmond said.

Burbank has created task forces in past years to deal with some hoarding cases, said Terre Hirsch, the city’s assistant community development director and license and code services administrator.

“You really have to be concerned with them,” he said.

The city usually doesn’t find out about people who hoard things inside their home until police and firefighters discover it, Hirsch said.

Burbank doesn’t have any active hoarding cases, he said.

In the 1990s, officials discovered a woman who had collected mountains of trash in her backyard, and the trash caught on fire. The city put a lien on her property to clean up the trash, but three years after the fire, she re-accumulated much of the cleared debris.

For some hoarders, throwing away the trash that they collected can be heartbreaking, said Renee Crawford, the city’s social services coordinator.

“Sometimes, there is a lot of resistance because they really do not want the help,” Crawford said.

THE NEXT STEP

Hoarders who can’t de-clutter and continue to find themselves being swallowed by mountains of junk often contact Dorothy Breininger, founder and president of the Delphi Center for Organization.

Breininger works throughout the country with hoarders and their friends and family to get them to let go of their attachment to material items.

“Their stuff is their big hug,” she said.

One of Breininger’s most challenging cases was an Inglewood man who collected bicycles and parts, which took up the outside and inside of his home. He slept on his home’s porch because the inside was too cluttered.

Breininger, who is often contacted by county and city officials for help, took nearly a year to organize the man’s home, she said. She now has a TV show called “Hoarders,” which will appear on A&E; this month.

Hoarding is less common among people born in 1961 and later, because they often communicate using newer technology and accumulate less paper, she said.

A person’s identity is tied to their material items, so getting rid of objects can be challenging, she said.

“For a lot of people, they like to hold on to what they once were,” Breininger said.

In the case of the Glendale woman, she held on to bags of trash.

The city issued an inspection warrant last week to search her condo to make sure it was cleaned up. But the condo wasn’t clean and remained abandoned.

Some of the trash had been removed from Hill’s first visit, but most of the conditions stayed the same, he said.

The city’s next step is abatement.

Hill was working on getting bids from cleaning companies to remove the junk and trash from the home.

The items must be removed from her home within 14 days from when the warrant was issued.

The removal is estimated to cost the city $40,000, Hill said.

“The biggest thing for us is her health,” he said. “We also don’t want to affect the quality of life of the residents.”

HELP FOR HOARDERS

The following is a list of phone numbers for local agencies that help hoarders and their friends and family deal with the condition.

 Los Angeles County’s Adult Protective Services: (877) 477-3646

 Glendale’s Neighborhood Services Department: (818) 548-3700

 Burbank’s License and Code Service office: (818) 238-5283

 Department of Mental Health’s ACCESS Center: (800) 854-7771

 Infoline: (800)339-6993

 Self-Help and Recovery: (310) 305-8878

  Dephi Center for Organization: (888) 229-5346 (The organization’s founder and president, Dorothy Breininger, has offered to help people organize and provide ongoing therapy if they agree to appear on her TV show, “Hoarders,” on A&E.;)