The Guardian80%
‘People think you’ve got 10,000 cats’: the support group for hoarders 44%
By Jessica Murray Faisa Mohamed
7/16/2026, 9:00:19 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Negativity Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 33.6% saturation with 257 hits. Analysis detected 2,045 faulty-reasoning hits from 765 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 47% and a BS Rank of 44% (9,302 of 16,550 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 56.20% of the article peer group.
At one end of the table sits Tony*, who showers at his local leisure centre in Birkenhead every day.
His landlord won’t fix his bathroom because of his hoarding.
Then there’s Sarah*, who ended up homeless with her three teenagers after their landlord evicted them because of hoarding.
In her new home the problem has started again, but she says she’s petrified to ask for help in case she loses her property.
Sian Cowley, 35, who has struggled with hoarding for decades, says: “I’ve lived without central heating for two years.
A lot of us live without the basics like hot water, heating and cooking because we are too scared to get people in to do repairs because of the threat of eviction.”
Chloe*, who began hoarding after her mother took her own life, says: “As soon as you say you’re a hoarder, people think you’ve got 10,000 cats and loads of cockroaches.
But we’ve all got something that’s made us like this – some people might do sex, drugs or drink.
Ours is stuff.”
In an attempt to improve support, Prima Group has launched a first-of-its-kind national hoarding pledge for housing providers to sign up to: instead of them spending thousands of pounds on enforced housing clearances or lengthy court battles for evictions, they promise to work with a resident and get them help.
Jenny Devon, a sustainment and cohesion manager at Prima Group, says: “What happens a lot is they get a skip and send people to clear the whole place.
But it’s that person’s stuff.
It’s such a personal thing, it’s not rubbish.
It’s that trinket linked to the trauma, or to the parent who’s died.
It just needs more empathy.
It’s so badly dealt with.
And it’s because people are not educated – the worst thing is that nobody understands.”
She says there is a need to keep residents safe, by ensuring gas safety checks can be carried out, for instance, but long-term solutions are better than short-term fixes.
Jo Cooke, the director of Hoarding Disorders UK, says that in the nearly 15 years she has worked supporting hoarders, she has never known an enforced clearance or eviction to help the person.
“When the threat [of clearance and eviction] is looming, it will only increase hoarding behaviours,” she says.
“It leaves hoarders feeling violated and they will mistrust any professionals who could support them.”
According to the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (Iriss), almost 100% of people who experience a property clearance without behavioural therapy will regress to hoarding behaviour more rapidly.
Cowley says social services became involved her case, and hundreds of pounds was spent on mandatory cleaning.
“They would be better spending their money on peer support groups like this, because this is the only thing that has made an impact on me in 20 years,” she says.
Cooke adds that the charity has supported countless people who have experienced hoarding-related fires, including a woman who lost her husband in a fire earlier this year.
Ruth Cookson, 53, a Prima resident, helped set up Bringing Hoarders Together four years ago.
She has struggled with hoarding for decades and says she was thrown out her family home aged 22 because of it.
Her current home was flagged for hoarding after a gas safety check, but she ignored the letters from her housing association as she was scared of eviction.
After the situation deteriorated during Covid lockdown, she decided to get help.
She says the smell in her house was so bad, any visitors had to wear a mask.
“I just couldn’t cope.
I didn’t want to hoard, but I didn’t know where to turn,” she says.
“I wouldn’t admit I had a problem, I buried my head in the sand.”
She says having a housing officer she could trust was essential, as was going at her own pace.
She had some setbacks.
Workers who came to help clear the property were rude and told her neighbours about the condition of her home.
“Before they could start pointing fingers, I put it all over Facebook myself.
That was the turning point of me knowing I was going to get the help,” she says.
Now her home is safe and clean, she can finally get the cat she has been desperate for, and spends time helping people in the support group.
“I’m here to say: if you think you can’t do it, yes, you can do it.
I’m living proof you can,” she says.
*Names have been changed
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