AHWATUKEE, AZ — A hoarding situation that neighbors say escalated for years ended in the death of an Ahwatukee Foothills woman in late July or early August, leading to neighbors questioning what could have been done to save her.
"You couldn't open the front door. You couldn't open it at all," Mike Hilliard says, as he swings open the front door of his newest property near the 202 South Mountain.
Hilliard bought the home this week. A crew is now taking on the monumental task of clearing out a home so cluttered with trash and discarded items, it's almost impossible to walk through it.
Furniture and items, sometimes hard to distinguish through the grime of years of neglect, are piled chest-high in the living room, the only part of the house visible from the front door.
"It goes all the way around here, even up the stairs to the second story," Hilliard, a founder of homebuyer agency Amazing Offer, says. The clutter spills out into the backyard, where it's piled to the point where it makes movement in some parts of the yard impossible.
According to Hilliard, who has bought and flipped homes across the Valley for years, this property is by far the worst case he's ever seen. The scene looks like something straight from a TV show, but for this neighborhood, it's a real-life tragedy that has played out slowly over the last few years.
"It's been a problem, we've noticed it from day one," said Angela, who has lived a few doors down from the woman's property for the last eight years.
Neighbors describe the former owner of the home as a woman who was in her 60s, as intelligent as she was troubled.
"It has just been years of walking by the house and just the smell, you'd have to hold your breath walking by it," said Brad Albert, who lives down the street.
Neighbors add that the woman was friendly, but occasionally had outbursts, like yelling at children or having conversations with someone who wasn't there. A few weeks ago, the woman was found dead in her backyard with her dogs, both of which survived. It's believed the woman was outside because she could no longer enter her home due to the clutter.
Her body lay there, undiscovered, for over a week in the Phoenix heat, Hilliard was told. The woman's death came after years of neighbors calling every public service they could think of, desperate to help as the piles of trash grew and the mental health issues became more obvious.
"We all, in our own ways, tried to help her," Angela said.
Neighbors estimate over 100 calls were made to help the woman in the last four years alone. While the issues started earlier, in recent years, the community felt the woman's mental health condition had deteriorated.
Both Brad and Angela expressed concerns that there was a gap in public services that their neighbor had fallen through.
"There's certainly a gap," Brad said. "I think we all felt somewhat powerless to be able to, you know, get her the assistance."
"That was the most upsetting thing, was that we weren't hearing back, and it seems like nobody knew who to talk to," Angela added.
The City of Phoenix says hoarding cases require the collaboration of multiple agencies. Neighbors tell ABC15 they contacted some of those agencies. It's unclear the response or resolution of those calls, and ABC15 has reached out to the city for more information.
Now, an industrialized dumpster and the sound of machinery clearing the area are signs that change is coming to this community. Neighbors only hope that change will extend to services that can prevent this from happening again.
The City of Phoenix recommends the following for anyone who sees a neighbor or loved one experiencing severe cases of hoarding or other mental health issues:
