By Amy Cheswick, Director of Customers and Partners at Raven Housing Trust

As many social housing landlords know, hoarding disorders are challenging to treat.  Some people who hoard do not recognise it as a problem or have little awareness of how their hoarding is affecting their life or the lives of others.

Historically, the focus from landlords has been making the property safer by clearing and cleaning the space, usually at a significant cost.  Taking this action doesn’t get underneath the reasons for hoarding and in many cases, people will start to hoard again.

In our experience, hoarding is often linked to underlying grief and loss, past trauma, or other mental health issues such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety and depression.  Removing the items can increase stress and even exacerbate their disorder – presenting a number of challenges for landlords.

At Raven, we’ve changed our approach to hoarding to ensure we can better support our customers to achieve long-term change.

Reviewing policy

For starters, unlike many other housing providers, we deal with reports of hoarding as a safeguarding issue rather than anti-social behaviour (ASB). This means that all our frontline staff, including trades operatives, have been trained to spot signs of hoarding as well as other safeguarding issues.

Getting alongside our customers, building trust and understanding are key to tackling hoarding.  Our team have also undertaken training with a psychologist to understand the complex relationships and emotional attachments people with hoarding disorders have with the items they keep.

Widening understanding

I’ve had some great conversations with colleagues who previously did not know whether to report something or were worried about someone and didn’t know what to do. Following our training, we saw an increase in reports and went from dealing with a handful of cases to almost 30.

Unless there is an immediate health and safety issue or repair needed, our tenancy team prioritise engaging, listening and building trust and awareness, rather than immediately ordering work to clear the property.

We balance this with the health and safety needs of all affected residents.  We aim to only take enforcement action when all other avenues have been tried.  Where we need to act, we seek injunctions with positive conditions to engage with support and allow access – with possession action a last resort.

Building partnerships

Hoarding isn’t just a housing issue.  We engage with partners through multi-agency working groups, or make safeguarding referrals where this is not possible, and we work with decluttering experts to support our residents with making gradual improvements, with our team regularly visiting customers to review their progress.

Long-term success

Working in this way, may not necessarily offer a ‘quick fix’ but there are many benefits.  It makes good business sense as we have reduced costs for repeat clearance and reduced wasted time in failed compliance and repairs appointments.

Most importantly, we’re changing the lives of our customers, who feel safe and supported, building relationships of trust with our team.  This is highlighted in Chrissy’s story – Chrissy is one of our customers whose experience demonstrates how seeing the person and not their disorder can change the way we think and how we respond to hoarding disorders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL43-yvK_8E