Houston hoarder is found dead under four-feet of debris inside his townhome after residents who 'had not seen him in months' grew concerned over 'foul odor'

A Houston hoarder was found dead under four-feet of debris inside his townhome after residents had not seen him in months and grew concerned over a 'foul odor.'  

The decomposed body of the man in his mid-70's was found in a northwest Houston townhome Friday. 

Houston police and fire officials responded to neighbors calls after the odor got 'too bad to ignore.' The condition of the home was so concerning, police had to enlist the aid of Texas EquuSearch on Friday to locate a man's body.

Responders - equipped with Hazmat suits, gloves, and masks - recalled the shocking scene upon entering the home. They described being greeted by rats, and massive piles of debris that obstructed all pathways. 

'You think you've seen everything, and then you realize you haven't,' Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, told ABC 7. 

Health and safety concerns caused delays in the efforts to dig through the debris and uncover the man's body. 

Officials told ABC13 that there was nowhere to walk. 

Miller said a cadaver dog found the badly decomposed body after clearing nearly four feet of debris. 

'I don't understand how anyone could live in those conditions,' Neil Zimmerman, a neighbor, told the outlet. 

The homeowner, who neighbors said they hadn't seen in months, was known for his hoarding problem in the community. 

Neighbors said the crisis had developed over years. They previously attempted to help the man but he refused to accept further assistance when a state agency wanted to exterminate the rats in his residence, which he called his 'pets.' 

Luis Miranda, a home owner's board member who joined the effort to clear the home said the stench was too foul to ignore. 

'When I knocked, as soon as I opened the screen, I could smell the foul odor,' Miranda said to ABC 13.

'I didn't think we would get all the boxes out of the way. They just caved in on him,' he added.

Neighbors said they wished they could have helped the man soon and said they felt terrible nobody came to check up on his but felt like they did all that they could have. 

'It is super sad. Nobody is here to claim him or check up on him,' Miranda said. 'I feel like we did what we could, but we just had nowhere else to go. We tried the city. We just couldn't get help for him.' 

The cost of the costly hazmat bill will likely fall on the Home Owners Association, board members told ABC 13. 

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences collected the body from the scene. 

A cause of death has not yet been announced. 

Experts said they've seen a rise in hoarding since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hoarding has become more common during the Covid pandemic and experts pin the blame on a combination of anxiety, grief, and the ease of one-click shopping, according to an October report. 

More extreme than a tendency to hold on to a few trinkets for sentimental value or stocking up on a few extra packages of toilet paper, hoarding behavior is often a symptom of more severe anxiety or obsessive-compulsive issue.

Before the covid-19 pandemic locked the globe in its vice-like grip, between two and three percent of the world’s population were obsessive hoarders. But that rate is believed to have shot up four percent since spring 2020.

Cleaning crews that bravely traverse crowded apartments often collect hundreds if not tons of garbage. It is also not uncommon to uncover long-dead pets and human excrement.

People struggling with mental health conditions such as OCD before the pandemic saw their symptoms worsen when much of society went into an extended lockdown, suddenly deprived of easy access to treatment and support from loved ones.

Psychiatrists have designated hoarding disorder as its own distinct diagnosis, though it has historicially been considered to be a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which affects roughly 2.5 million adults, or 1.2 percent of the US population

In the early stage of the pandemic outbreak when the novel virus and where it came from was still shrouded in mystery, the world was forced into mandatory periods of quarantine when it seemed that much of people’s lives were suddenly outside of their control.

Dr David Nathan, a psychologist at Minneapolis-based Allina Health, told UPI: ‘As the pandemic was a very difficult experience for all involved, we saw increased rates of all stress reactions, and that includes increases in hoarding behaviors.’

Hoarding disorder typically begins showing itself during adolescence and snowballs from there.

Severe hoarding is therefore more common in older adults than their younger counterparts.

While hoarding disorder is its own diagnosis, its links to OCD have been well-established.