Fighting to Remain Engulfed in Junk

Arlington fire inspectors opened the condominium once a week for up to five hours to allow Shipkovitz to clean up. Progress was slow. After six weeks, Crossan's family hired a lawyer, refused to allow Shipkovitz back into the condominium and hired a moving company to haul his things to a storage facility in Fairfax County, where they still sit.

"As long as we see progress, we work with them," said Pat Walker, an Alexandria Fire Department inspector and member of the hoarding task force. "If not, that's when we get firm. Sometimes we have to give them an hour to get out. It's all on a case-by-case basis."

That, legal scholars say, is a problem. Deciding who gets evicted and when is a subjective call. And that could lead to inconsistent enforcement, which is a civil rights violation.

"What constitutes unlawful messiness as opposed to acceptable messiness is very much in the eye of the beholder," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law scholar at George Washington University. "If you end up with a Felix Unger inspector, most every college student would be declared a hoarder."

Henry St. John Fitzgerald, former assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia and a friend of Shipkovitz's, is rallying advocates of private property rights to his cause. "Sam Shipkovitz is a hoarder. . . . But that's not the county's business," he said. "Locking him out -- that's government interference."

Fairfax County Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason) has pushed the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to devise a regional hoarding plan. She concedes that lockouts and forced cleanups are intrusive. "This is still evolving," she said. "And it's a whole lot better than leaving it alone like it used to be, where people would die in their hoarding houses because nobody knew."

Shipkovitz's court filings are typed single-space or handwritten on 100 percent recycled paper. In brackets, he writes asides such as "Presently staying in moldy basement apartment -- have to fight cat for a sofa to sleep on."

Crossan lives alone in the cleaned-out condominium, able to sit for the first time in a chair in the living room with a clear view of the pool. "It feels empty," he said.

On a recent balmy evening, during a visit to his storage unit, Shipkovitz passed a Super Dollar Store on Columbia Pike and had to stop. He needed a 25-foot telephone cord. He bought three. And an electric shaver. And reading glasses. And tools. And a jar of pickles.

"Hoarding again," he said.