it s a bunch of old cottages that get converted into homes. kind of in the middle of nowhere. not much is known about the previous owner. but for schaeffer the price is right even though the house appears to be in shambles. i ve seen people save things and collect things. but i think in this case, the individual was cleaning the neighborhood, so to speak. armed with a video camera to document the scene, schaeffer visits his new property with a friend, david lang, and lang s neighbor ryan lamere. you want to see hoarding? you re going to see it. looked like a typical house that had neglect. the neighbors had put up a fence on the one side because of what had been there. the trees were all overgrown, the bushes. so they were overgrown on the house. there was a car parked outside. it was completely packed with stuff. that was overflow from the house. basically when you opened up the door to the car, it was filled to the ceiling. they shut the door and then
more than $636,000 in restitution to the humane societies and are barred from contact with cats. for the humane society, another shocking case of animal hoarding. this time in gordon, alabama. more than 200 animals are rescued from deplorable conditions. a relatively large property. i think it was 20-something acres and there were a number of homes on the property. a number of folks living on the property. but each of these folks had upwards of ten animals in their particular living situation. it was a hoarder commune, if you want to call it that. if you didn t know it was there, you didn t know it was there. one of those places tucked in the back, then all of a sudden in the trees chained spots of dogs. many were kept in a variety of pens and many were just chained on the property. and there was an unbelievable amount of trash and debris strewn all throughout the property. the residents from the main one was just filled with all sort of stuff.
you could break your wrist. and it wasn t just that area, it was throughout the entire bottom floor. in the basement busted water pipes create a stagnant pool of sludge. they had no heat. and as a result the pipes broke. we were wearing boots above the knees to get through that stuff because the paper and all the stuff, the clothing and things was absolutely disgusting. for 13 days the team digs their way through the rotting garbage, hardened candle wax and stacks of debris. in total the crew fills five 20-foot long dumpsters. i didn t think it was ever, ever going to get done. ever. it was the longest job i ve ever done. we recovered that house. the place got cleaned out and they put it on the market. we got there just in time. hoarding is a serious disorder that can leave many feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. but as we ve seen whether the issue is garbage, books or animals, life saving help is
you know, have you seen oh, my god. jessica s mother says her hoarding tendencies can be traced back to her college years, but it isn t until the sudden death of her husband in 2001 that a tendency becomes a compulsion. went way over the edge. you do the grief counseling, you do all the things you think you should. sometimes it doesn t happen. what i found was i would go to work and come home and just want to cocoon myself. i just didn t want to deal with anything. in the cases of somebody, a spouse passing away, you have kind of two complicated issues because now you re more alone, you re more isolated and you fill things up with stuff. a lot of times people with compulsive hoarding don t trust their memory. they re afraid they re going to lose whatever association or connectedness to the individual that they lost. early efforts to seek help from psychiatrists are unsuccessful. i never had the feeling that they really grasped what i was
he loved tinkering on computers and taking them apart. just like everything. lunch containers, soda bottles, you name it. anything you could buy at the grocery store anywhere bring it home it was all there. a lot of paperwork. people have a huge problem with what to do with paper. the crew begins carefully sifting through the debris room by room. we don t take the snow shovels and just haul the stuff into a trash can. we actually go through everything. we re going through those papers looking for stocks and bonds and photographs and birth certificates and things like that. the removal takes a seven-person crew three days to complete. we left him in really good shape. the cluttering client avoids eviction and just months after the cleanup the alfreds receive an unexpected call. out of the blue has a conversation with ron and says i just wanted to call and thank you for saving my life. shortly after we did that