45+ years of professional and personal experience working with hoarders
PROFESSIONAL
Initiated and led Hoarding-Behavior Taskforce in 1987.
Conclusions:
As Director of Counseling and Placement for Independent Housing Services, I made a commitment to every housing provider we worked with that if there were ever a problem with someone we placed in their facility, we would help resolve it. Out of the 450 new clients I saw per year, there were many people who were hoarding. Some of these clients were repeat-evictees who placed enormous time demands on the system. Hence, the taskforce.
Later, as a Property Manager and then Director of Property Management, people who hoarded presented constant issues. The first building I managed had many entrenched hoarders whose behavior had been unchecked by prior managers for years.
When I began teaching my Eliminate Clutter workshops for CCSF in 2004, there were always people who signed up for workshops who clearly needed more help than the course was designed to provide. The first presentation of the hoarding workshop in 2006 was filled to capacity and student reactions were immediate, powerful, and dramatic. Workshops were expanded to three-sessions per course in 2010, then to five sessions in 2011. The first edition of Overcome Hoarding and Transform Your Life was written for the 2011 workshop.
Much of the material in both the first and second editions was developed based upon student needs, questions, and interactions. Students talk about the book with the kind of reverence and intensity often given to the AA Big Book. Those who use it most intensively are making the most progress.
TRAINING
BA in Psychology, MS in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling
ORGANIZING
Worked as a librarian and professional organizer at various points and often encountered extreme clutterers and hoarders.
PERSONAL
Lived above a hoarder landlord for 30 years and have family members who are hoarders. Encountered many other hoarders in variety of contexts.