Fighting to Remain Engulfed in Junk

Local officials have been struggling with the issue as they find that compulsive hoarders are everywhere. Hoarding task forces are springing up in increasingly crowded jurisdictions throughout the country.

In New York recently, a man was trapped in his apartment for two days after piles of paper fell on him. In Maryland, a woman's children were taken away because her house was packed. In Arlington last year, officials estimate, five fires were associated with hoarding. And in Alexandria, a hoarder died in 2004 when his cigarette ignited piles of trash.

Shipkovitz lived in a building with 68 units on 18 floors.

"We take a more aggressive approach in multi-family settings," said Rob Dejter, a Montgomery County code enforcement official and part of the county's Working Group on Hoarding. "Someone out on a two-acre parcel is very different from someone in a condominium, rental apartment or townhouse who has rotting meat, roaches, organic waste, mice, rats and bacteria that can become airborne."

The hoarders found by the task forces include lawyers, doctors, professors, government officials. They feel compelled to acquire stuff and are unable to organize it and incapable of throwing anything away.

Though researchers have just begun to study this behavior and its association with mental illness, brain dysfunction and obsessive-compulsive disorders, they estimate that 1.4 million Americans -- and that might be a gross underestimation -- cannot stop themselves.

In the past, hoarders were rarely found out. They were discovered only if someone complained to authorities. The officials who investigated had few options. "All we could do was put people on the street," said Mike Conner, former chief fire marshal in Alexandria.

When Alexandria sheriff's deputies wheeled a wailing 83-year-old hoarder out of her apartment in an office chair in 1997 and dumped her and 40 years' worth of newspapers on the side of the street, Conner figured there had to be a better way. So he enlisted fire and building code inspectors and mental health, geriatric and social workers into a task force.

Once members began sharing information, they discovered that there were far more hoarders than they thought. Then, last year, news broke of Ruth Kneuven, the "cat lady" who hoarded nearly 500 living and dead cats, and hoarding complaints in the Washington region went through the roof.

Shipkovitz, who had moved into his friend Steve Crossan's condominium in December 1996, was turned in by a social worker visiting Crossan who called the fire department.

Most task forces try to work with hoarders, though the help is often refused. So, many hoarders are evicted.

In some instances, task force members give hoarders time to clean up. But in cases in which they deem the danger imminent, such as in Shipkovitz's, they immediately lock the doors, condemn the property, cut the utilities and evict the hoarder. Residents, some of whom decamp to hotels, shelters, friends' houses or their cars, can generally return during daylight hours to dig themselves out. But they cannot sleep there.