Hoarding till the point of potential house eviction

[Kim]

I’m a carer for my mum who amongst other very complex physical and mental health problems has OCD with severe hoarding disorder.

In 2018 she moved from a significantly hoarded 3 bedroomed house to a 2 bedroomed significantly smaller ground floor flat.

The fire safety have been out several times and have deemed the flat unsafe and prone to fires. With this she is looking at facing eviction from her flat with is council. 

She is  also disabled and has severe anxiety and won’t let anyone including rug myself her daughter touch her items and this includes the general waste bin.

she has had medication and therapy and CBT but none have seemed to work.

she also have severe depression and other chronic health conditions including chronic pain meaning most days she is physically and mentally not able to get out of bed.

any advice please help!

 

[Hal]

Hi Kim,

I need to look into this much more for you, but I wonder if your mum might have some protection under the 2010 Equality Act, this info from MIND seems to suggest she does:

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/housing/your-housing-rights/#.XaHPziXTWEf

I could be wrong but perhaps they’re hoping the threat of eviction might be enough to spur her on to resolving the issue, but by the sounds of it I think your mum’s going to need much more help from a professional therapist to help her begin making the sort of changes she needs to make. Is she under the care of a mental health team at the moment? 

It must be so difficult for both of you...when your mum downsized in 2018 did that involve throwing anything away at that time, I can imagine it would have been extremely difficult to do if it did, but did she manage it?

Hopefully someone with firsthand experience might also reply but I’ll do some more research too.

How are you doing, are you coping okay?

Hal