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It takes a long time and effort to get a house into a state like that. So it's not like they "all of a sudden" got ill and things went downhill. They chose to make that mess happen.
It's wild to me that someone could live that way and hold onto a job. But some do and their employers and coworkers have no idea of their living conditions. They might realize the person is no neat freak but they would never guess how bad things had gotten for them.
There was a story that appeared in WaPo back in the late 80s. A childless couple lived in a townhouse in Fairfax. It was one of the older townhouses that were built with concrete dividers between each house (something that is no longer done).
The neighbors had one complaint about the couple. Every night they would put plates of food in their backyard for the raccoons and whatever other wild animals that would show up. Despite being confronted by the HOA, the couple continued to leave out food.
One day they went to work and didn't close their front door properly. It was a windy day and the wind blew the door wide open. A neighbor walking by decided that he would close it. He looked into the house and saw a real nightmare. This couple hoarded so much that their floors were sagging. The neighbor called the police who in turn, called the health department. It was horrible. In the kitchen, the oven door was wide open and a rat made a nest in there. Due to the filth and sagging floors, the house was condemned. When the couple got home, they saw their house being emptied out. The wife was crying over losing all their things. They were told it was unsafe for them to go back into the house.
Per the bolded --- The couple worked for the Feds. Both were GS-14s. When their co-workers found out about the hoarding, they were shocked because both of them kept their work areas very neat and organized! Go figure...
ETA: Here's another horrific hoarding situation if anyone is interested:
Depending on the state, county the most they can do, for all to long a time, is threaten to serve fines to the hoarder to add onto the tax bill. That is on a private single family home. In this situation I don't see why they couldn't get in using the HOA keys to have him removed and sent to jail for a few nights in hopes of getting him to do something. Unfortunately older people cannot do anything without help so it makes no sense to me threatening them or attempting to force them to clean up when they are obviously alone and to old, physically or mentally sick to do it themselves.
It is harder to get them out when they own the condo, home than it is if they are a tenant renting the place.
I live in a community with an HOA. The HOA doesn't have keys to my home. I once rented a townhouse in community that had an HOA. The HOA would send our landlord, who owned the home, a notice if we had a tear in the screen or something else that needed to be addressed. Our landlord had keys to his property but our HOA absolutely did not.
HOA members don't enter homeowners' homes like that.
Maybe that happens in apartment rentals with a management office. But in this case the elderly hoarder appears to have been a homeowner.
Out of all the mentally-ill groups of people, the hoarders seem to be the ones that
almost never change their ways.
I see the hoarding-shows on TV, you can see that even when these people move to a new
home, they are starting the same nonsense that caused them to have to flee their old,
ruined dwelling.
I cannot understand people who live in piles of garbage because they somehow see this
refuse as something that can't be thrown out, DOH!
Rotting food, how the **** are you attached to that!?!?!??!??!
Hoarding is an off-shoot of OCD which is notoriously difficult to treat. You cannot try to attach logic to it any more than you can with people who pull out their own hair or wash their hands two hundred times a day. We should not be harsh on them, they experience chronic compulsions that overwhelm their brains and overtake their lives. They can't just change even if they want to so their minds trick them into seeing it as not a big problem.
Hoarding is an off-shoot of OCD which is notoriously difficult to treat. You cannot try to attach logic to it any more than you can with people who pull out their own hair or wash their hands two hundred times a day. We should not be harsh on them, they experience chronic compulsions that overwhelm their brains and overtake their lives. They can't just change even if they want to so their minds trick them into seeing it as not a big problem.
The problem is hoarders create very real health hazards, fire hazards and property damage with their hoard. That isn't fair to their neighbors. It isn't fair to their families.
"I've fallen and can't get up" is a real thing, and not everyone has people checking on them frequently. Someone featured on one of the hoarding shows (the Canadian woman with the dogs) actually died relatively young a few years ago when she fell through the floor of her house, although I don't think her body lingered there. Guess the "treatment" from the show didn't take with her!
Out of all the mentally-ill groups of people, the hoarders seem to be the ones that
almost never change their ways.
I see the hoarding-shows on TV, you can see that even when these people move to a new
home, they are starting the same nonsense that caused them to have to flee their old,
ruined dwelling.
I cannot understand people who live in piles of garbage because they somehow see this
refuse as something that can't be thrown out, DOH!
Rotting food, how the **** are you attached to that!?!?!??!??!
Rotting food, excrement, dirty adult diapers, and locking up pets are all mental illness beyond the regular hoarders that just collect stuff from home shopping and thrift stores.
On that show hoarders one woman took her Mother the hoarder to her home. When they were in I think it was the living room the hoarder mom got up to go to the bathroom and proceeded to pull down her pants and relieve herself right there on the floor. She was horrified at the point of mental illness/incapacity.
These people are left alone way to long for anyone to help them before it gets to late. There is no medication to stop hoarding. It takes therapy and learning to control their impulses after dealing with grief they didn't deal with at the time they needed to. It is almost always after the death of a loved one but with poop lady that was mental illness. They had to have her put away and she still wanted one last taste of her own #2. That woman just couldn't understand it's not like one last ice cream sundae before a diet.
"I've fallen and can't get up" is a real thing, and not everyone has people checking on them frequently. Someone featured on one of the hoarding shows (the Canadian woman with the dogs) actually died relatively young a few years ago when she fell through the floor of her house, although I don't think her body lingered there. Guess the "treatment" from the show didn't take with her!
Or she refused the after care therapy they offered her.
I live in a community with an HOA. The HOA doesn't have keys to my home. I once rented a townhouse in community that had an HOA. The HOA would send our landlord, who owned the home, a notice if we had a tear in the screen or something else that needed to be addressed. Our landlord had keys to his property but our HOA absolutely did not.
HOA members don't enter homeowners' homes like that.
Maybe that happens in apartment rentals with a management office. But in this case the elderly hoarder appears to have been a homeowner.
This is NOT correct for high rise condos. HOA absolutely has keys to units in the event of an emergency. Water leaking on the 6th floor easy will find its way down to the lower floors.
The building manager has keys to every unit in my uncle's building and they want him checking units since most of the building is empty 6 months of the year.
Hoarding is tough. I have a relative that has always had too much stuff (like a 2 car garage you couldn't get a bicycle into). She had a 1 car garage prior and it was still full so clearly size doesn't matter. She paid crazy money for built in storage shelves but once they were full the stuff was simply overflowing on the garage floor.
Her standard answer: I'm going to sell that stuff. She is glued to those TV shows that find oddball items that are worth money.
Current place is a 2/2, 9 years in. Place is nice, furniture is a little big for the rooms but it passes off ok. Master closet is jam packed, can't add a t-shirt to a rack. There is a desk in the corner of the master bedroom that is overflowing with paperwork/mail etc.
But the travesty is the guest room, standard bedroom/closet filled. 4-5 ft high in the whole room, closet is eye watering full. Rolling clothes rack, boxes on top of boxes some are untouched for 9+ years. As a joke I thought it would be funny to empty the room (she normally keeps the door shut) and see how long it takes her to realize its all gone. My guess: atleast 2 weeks!
This is NOT correct for high rise condos. HOA absolutely has keys to units in the event of an emergency. Water leaking on the 6th floor easy will find its way down to the lower floors.
The building manager has keys to every unit in my uncle's building and they want him checking units since most of the building is empty 6 months of the year.
I've never lived in a condo but it would make sense that the building manager would be able to gain access to a unit if something like a burst pipe happened and the owner was away.
But in the townhouse situation that this man was living in, I have never heard of the HOA having keys to the individually owned homes. The HOA is usually tasked with keeping the community looking nice and they send out written warnings to the owners if yards get overgrown, front doors need painting, screens need replacing. They might provide a neighborhood watch and host various community get togethers throughout the year. They don't go around knocking on doors and checking on people and they certainly don't enter people's homes without permission.
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. That woman just couldn't understand it's not like one last ice cream sundae before a diet. 
