Extreme hoarding: NYC team tackles both mess and the mind

NEW YORK (AP) — In the frantic aftermath of a gas explosion last year that leveled three nearby buildings, the firefighters who arrived to evacuate Adam Chrin's fourth-floor apartment were confronted by an entirely different disaster.

Chrin is among hundreds of older, mostly poor New Yorkers who have been assisted by a private initiative that seeks to tackle not only the fetid clutter of extreme hoarding, but also the mental, legal and financial woes that are often at the root of the mess.

New York's skyrocketing real estate rates and tiny, easily cluttered apartments make it an appropriate place for the Geriatric Mental Health and Hoarding Initiative, which sends social workers to the worst public nuisance cases, in which the hoarding is so bad that residents are threatened with eviction.

[...] they gently persuade the person to participate in the cleanup and free counseling, offered through a partnership with Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center and The New School, which are studying the disorder.

Chrin, a native of Paris who worked as a teacher and in other jobs, said his hoarding problems began decades ago after his mother's death and a series of financial failures.