GUEST VIEWPOINT
Living with a hoarder
By Anonymous
My tale may help landlords understand this problem and respond to hoarding whenever it is discovered.
I've been a vendor for legal teams for several years and am always captivated whenever Daniel Bornstein talks about vexing issues when it comes to managing landlord-tenant relationships because it is more than that. Many of the principles of having a harmonious rental relationship and solving problems can be applied to other relationships in business and life.
At times, some conflicts become both landlord-tenant matters and deeply personal struggles, like hoarding, a behavior that clinicians consider a mental health disorder. Having both a legal background and having witnessed hoarding conditions in my own household, I felt obligated to share my story and offer some insights, for what it's worth.
I met my wife because she was a neighbor. One of the first images I remember was her boyfriend escorting her out to the curb to throw out various clutter. Her live-in boyfriend at the time wasn’t so tolerant of having their place overwhelmed with junk. One of my first opening lines to her, though, was that they shouldn’t throw out books. They could have at least donated them to a library to have others soak up the knowledge and adventures that lie inside the pages.
Fast forward nine years later and our household is full of books that nobody will read. I changed my position and want them to be thrown out. The lessons for landlords?
The greatest predictor of hoarding and dysfunction in a rental unit is prior hoarding and dysfunction.
In our first residence, we rented a two-bedroom apartment in a duplex and she brought a lot of stuff, but more and more stuff was accumulated, and there was nowhere to put it. The neighbor downstairs was a nice person but before not too long, she found out that she couldn’t use our mutually shared basement because there was a sea of bags.
At first, I didn’t mind and was a beneficiary of the hoarding because my wife would go to bag sales, thrift stores, estate sales, churches giving away clothing, and whatnot. She would turn around and resell these garments, many of them brand name, really nice clothes. I became a very nice dresser because I would cherry-pick the clothes I wanted that fit me and whatever didn’t sell were mine to have. My closet became overflowing and I looked like GQ.
When the twins were born, we didn’t have enough space in our cramped apartment so we rented a single-family house. By that time, my wife had started an eBay account and was doing well selling items online. She got more and more contractor bags full of clothes and at first found space for it. There was some overflow in the basement and maybe she could find some room in one of three bedrooms upstairs to fit more bags of clothes and other items.
After a while, though, she ran out of real estate and began using the garage, which I didn’t mind because we don’t park a car there. The garage was completely filled up with clothes, so the next place to move black bags was the shed, which was quickly consumed, as well. Next, it was the back porch, a very spacious, beautiful porch where the kids could play and have friends over a barbeque. Take a look at what it looks like now:
The only logical place to store more bags of clothes was the three bedrooms upstairs, designated for a playroom, a room for a futon and a television, and a home office. That seemed too lofty a goal, as all three bedrooms were stacked to the ceiling.
With no other options, the entire basement became inundated with clothes, as well as the stairway leading down to it. This made egress difficult and created a fire hazard. Many bags of clothes were too close to the furnace and water heater.
The other takeaway for landlords is that hoarding will metastasize to other areas. It may start in one room, but the growing number of items spill into other rooms, common areas, roofs, parking spaces, etc. It’s like roots that expand in every direction.
Of course, my wife can justify the hoarding by saying that she is selling it all. She says she is doing good on eBay and will get rid of it soon. Really? How many years will it take to sell all of this stuff? As if there is not enough to sell, she keeps getting more. Whenever I would say something, there were endless promises. It would be cleaned by next week. Then next month. Then by Christmas.
It seems that for every 5 items she sells on eBay, she gets 20 other items, which leads to my next point.
When a hoarding tenant says they are parting with items, this should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not only may they not get rid of them; they are prone to get more.
Don’t get me wrong, there are perks to living with a hoarder. One is, that you don’t have to wash clothes. You can simply open a bag and find something new to wear. The other is if I need something, there’s a good chance it can be found somewhere in the bowels of this house. When there was a concern for hypertension, she did some digging to find a device that could take my blood pressure. When my hair clippers stopped working, she could find a brand new pair in the basement. If we get behind on the utilities, no worries when they shut off the heat; she has several space heaters she picked up at garage sales.
And there’s some pretty weird, exotic stuff that are interesting but have no use. I’m trying to think of an example of some but I’m going blank at the moment.
And then there is a classic emotional attachment to an item, whether it will be ever used or not. If someone who doesn’t cook has all sorts of grills and cooking devices of every kind, are they necessary to have? When there are only four people in the household, is it essential to have 20 chairs? How many Christmas decorations to you need in the Spring? When nobody travels, why get so many luggage bags?
But you can’t touch a hoarder’s belongings, much less get rid of it. For some inexplicable reason, they have a bond to everything they own. It can be a dish with rotting fruit in it attracting flies, but they don’t want anyone else to wash it.
Once employed as a dishwasher, I’d like to think I can wash dishes here at home. But I’m not allowed to touch the dishes because they are hers. When something belongs to a hoarder, they do not want anyone to tamper with it, even if is to sanitize it. When help was offered to get others with trucks to help remove debris and bring bags to a storage unit, she was resistant. Which brings me up to the next takeaway for landlords.
Landlords, friends, family members, and third-party agencies may offer help to hoarding tenants, but it does not mean that they will take the help. While some may welcome the help, others will refuse it. At this point, there is no other option than an eviction. But at least housing providers should show the courts that there was a good-faith effort made to address the underlying issues.
I did what I called at the time the “nuclear” option by calling our landlord to alert him to the conditions. He took photos. By pure chance, as I was on our front porch, I saw a fire marshall inspector guy inspecting a property two houses down and I said, “Hey, sorry to bother you, but can I show you something?” He proceeded to inspect the house we are renting, took photos himself, and issued a notice of potential code violations, with September 27th being the date of a re-inspection to ensure the violations are cured.
He didn’t stop there, though. He called Child Protective Services, an agency who has also taken interest in the status of the property and is prying into every aspect of our lives. Needless to say, my wife was infuriated and we are not on good terms.
Parting thoughts.
I’ve learned from Daniel Bornstein that the fear of having a conversation with someone is more stressful than having the conversation itself. I also learned that there is a high recidivism rate for some types of behaviors and that whenever a problem is identified, it should be addressed head-on and not let it fester. Don’t kick the can down the road.
The cold reality in life and landlord-tenant relationships is that sometimes, things just can’t be worked out and there needs to be a chapter change. Fortunately, progress has been made in our case.
With an ultimatum of September 27th, she rented a storage unit and is working nonstop to get stuff out of here. She finally got it. Some people get the message with a feather and others need a barrelling freight train for the message to sink in.
This issue is tough, it may require a bit of intervention and tough love, and perhaps some help from mental health professionals to modify the root cause of the hoarding.
In the way of an update
My wife began moving several bags out in a minivan, a little at a time. I said, "Rather than making 500 trips in a minivan, let's get a big truck." Makes more sense, right?
So we rented a Penske truck, the biggest one they had, and significant progress has been made. The fire marshall agreed and will come back in a week to inspect again. At least someone could enter the house through the side door and get to the electrical box in the basement as mounds of bags were hauled away to a storage unit. But we're not done yet.
And surprise, surprise. Just as we are moving stuff out, more stuff comes in.