Hoarders: Building Safety VS. Fair Housing

Hoarders: Building safety vs. fair housing

May 1, 2017 – How should a property manager deal with tenants who hoard possessions? It can be tricky.

Hoarding is a recognized disorder with Fair Housing Act protections in most cases, but safety fire and building codes still apply. Dealing with a hoarding resident often requires tact, patience and understanding.

First challenge: What is hoarding?

When most people think "hoarder," they picture a house or unit so filled with stuff that it's hard or impossible to walk through, but that's an extreme case. Still, the Mayo Clinic defines hoarding as a disorder if the tenant has "difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them … experiences distress at the thought of getting rid of the items." Hoarders excessively accumulate items, regardless of actual value.

However, hoarding – like most mental disorders – describes a range of behaviors. The International OCD Foundation has a nine-level rating scale, and there's a fine line between, say, level 3 and level 4 – and no magic point where hoarding moves from "a concern" to "a problem that must be addressed."

Second challenge: Safety codes

Property managers must accommodate hoarding clients, but sometimes "accommodation" contradicts local safety codes, which can include building and fire codes. Many codes also have specific rules for conditions that rise to a level that "must be addressed." Codes also focus on the tenant as well as the landlord.

"Not only is (hoarding) a fire hazard, it can actually trap people on the inside," says Fire Marshall Thomas Goode in Virginia. Too much stuff makes "it hard for them to get out, as well as hard for us to get in."

Many experts who offer advice to hoarders' landlords start by reminding them that the tenant is a human being with special needs.

"Behind all the clutter in a house is a human being that never planned to hoard," says Mahalia Dryden-Mason with the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. "Hoarding is a disorder that lives on its own."

In addition to respecting a tenant and making reasonable accommodations, landlords dealing with hoarders should try working with the tenant to set reasonable goals for cleanup. Once agreed-up goals are created, they should follow up with a written plan.

In all cases, a "we're working together" attitude generally accomplishes more than an air of disgust followed by clean-up demands.

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