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▶ Child and Adult Protective Services

Child and Adult Protective Services are social workers who specialize in aiding children or seniors who are living in hazardous conditions. They can rally the same level of resources and support as a general social worker, but are more focused on children or seniors in need. It’s important to remember that these, or any, social workers are there for the person in need, which means they may not always do what family members think is best. They are focused on the hoarder or the people directly affected by the hoarding.

▶ City, County, or State Officials

The Building Inspector

Hoarders won’t be the ones to call in a building inspector to condemn their own houses. But ironically, once city or county officials get involved, a battery of municipal programs kicks in to help the homeowner. The city or county doesn’t want to own houses, they want to help homeowners fix them up and keep them.

Rick, the retired professor who hoarded paperwork, was living in a firetrap filled with twenty-five years’ worth of papers, and the room he called his library had also been damaged by a years-old water leak. Rick’s sister called the county because she was concerned about Rick’s living conditions. The city inspectors condemned the house not only because it was a firetrap but also because they found high levels of black mold.

After blocking off the room with the hazardous mold, which would be handled by a special crew, the inspectors checked in every other day during the cleaning to make sure no new hazards were uncovered. In hoarder houses, the clutter covers up a multitude of sins, including structural damage that’s not even visible until piles of stuff are removed from the house.

When a city or county official visits a house to evaluate the condition, the official writes a report with a list of things that have to be fixed and issues a warning. The homeowner is supposed to attend to those items on the list by the official’s next visit, usually thirty days later.

Because die-hard hoarders don’t usually comply—or do so halfheartedly—the next inspector invariably issues another warning. This may go on for some months, and if the homeowner makes any effort at all, then the inspector will postpone action, give the hoarder a provisional pass, and allow the homeowner to stay in the house, with the promise that the work will be done. For the house to actually be condemned, the inspector has to have made many visits over a long time period. But even once a house is officially condemned, things don’t necessarily start moving quickly.

A property that has actually been condemned is on the building inspector’s radar as long as that same homeowner is in the house, even once it’s cleaned up. If the hoarder leaves something in the driveway, a neighbor’s phone call will usually trigger a quick visit. Even without anyone filing reports, the inspectors will be visiting that house a few times a year just to make sure it’s staying clean and habitable.

Pest or Animal Control

Michelle had a hoarding problem that had become so bad that Child Protective Services had removed her two middle school–aged children and city authorities had determined that the house had to be cleaned immediately. In every room of the house newspapers were stacked about seven feet high, making access throughout the place difficult. But the real problem was the mice that were living in the clutter. The pest control man said that with close to three thousand mice, it was the worst he had ever seen. Our cleaning crew eventually filled two fifty-gallon trash bags with dead mice.

Michelle had been living in those conditions for years, and like many hoarders she was not a healthy woman. She was rail-thin, with her clothes sagging off her narrow shoulders. She coughed a lot, and her skin was dull and flaky. I don’t know if any of her health issues were caused by the mice, but it’s not a healthy environment for anyone.

Vermin like mice, rats, and cockroaches are common in hoarder houses, and a house like Michelle