Hoarders

Why are many unhoused "hoarders"? 

Why does a lot of it look like trash? 

There are many reasons someone, housed or unhoused, becomes a hoarder. Most track back to trauma, mental health, and addictive personalities. 

Let's break that down. How can trauma lead to hoarding? Depending on the type of trauma, it can lead to a sense of connection to objects, as if the memory lives within the item, and not having the item means losing that memory.

Resource insecurity causes trauma. Think of the great depression or families in poverty, even if that person has security now, the trauma from not having it can cause hoarding for fear of being in that situation again. 

Currently, living with resource insecurity may lead a person to keep everything they find because they never know when they will have something again. Yes, even if it appears to be trash. 

Having everything you own taken away every single day by people stealing it and the city throwing it out causes trauma; they become attached to the items they can hold onto, even if, in outsiders' eyes, it appears to be trash. 

Mental Health, it might seem like mental health comes into play with most things today, that are deemed not "normal," but decades of research have proven that mental health affects ALL aspects of our lives. 

Addictive personalities, what does this mean? This means a person who has traits that make them at a higher risk of developing addiction and compulsive behaviours—the obsessive behaviour of collecting items or keeping everything along the same lines as that item, can lead to hoarding situations. 

Another situation that may appear to be hoarding, but this one isn't. Someone who was living in a house loses it and now has to fit everything they own into their car, cart or a tent. It's going to look like hoarding because of the amount of items they have, but they literally just packed an entire house into a space that is less than 1/4 of what they had before. 

Look around your house. Now picture trying to fit into a tent, a cart or your car. It would look like a messy hoarding situation, but in reality, it's you trying to fit all you own into a tiny space.

Housed or unhoused, those who are hoarders need to be helped at their own speed and to feel in control. Rushing or forcing anything will cause the person to shut down. 

Creating a world without resource insecurity would end many hoarding situations before they even begin.