Grant funds hoarding response team

A grant is helping the town of Arlington intervene in cases of hoarding that pose safety or public health risks.

The Police Department applied for and received an $87,500 grant from the Department of Mental Health to fund a mental health clinician for a two-year period. About $7,000 of the grant was used to create a “hoarding response team” consisting of the clinician, public safety officers, and the head of Arlington’s Health and Human Services Department.

“The task force is only going to be concerned with the most severe hoarding,” said Arlington Police Capt. Robert Bonjourno. “We’re not talking about your typically cluttered home.”

Extreme hoarding can make it difficult to move around a home and provides a haven for rats, cockroaches and noxious odors that result from decomposing garbage. Some homes where hoarding and neglect are problems no longer have functional central heating and rely on space heaters, which creates a fire hazard, Bonjourno said.

As of early May, the hoarding response team had intervened in a dozen cases, he said. In one recent instance, Arlington police got a call from a resident reporting that a man was sleeping in a car and urinating in public. When members of the hoarding response team investigated, they learned that the man had nowhere to go because the Board of Health had condemned his house as unsafe for habitation due to hoarding.

In the past, Bonjourno said, it is “very likely this person would have ended up in police custody.” He said the town’s new approach “does the exact opposite.”

The aim, he said, is to make sure that the individuals involved get clinical help.