Summary
- Hoarders often struggle with mental illness and their conditions are exploited for shock value on the show.
- The show attempts to address the psychology of hoarding, but a one-hour episode cannot solve a serious mental illness.
- The subjects are forced to make quick decisions on camera while their lives are broadcasted as failures, but without adequate treatment, their situations often revert back to where they started.
When it first aired in 2009, A&E’s Hoarders focused on the relatively unknown extreme hoarding, and when looking at some of where the people featured in Hoarders are now, it’s clear the spotlight didn’t always help. Those featured in Hoarders often lived in houses loaded floor-to-ceiling with clutter, personal effects, and, most often, actual garbage. The reality TV show offered a startling look into the lives of those living with the results of hoarding, and it shined a light on the unsung tragedies inherent in many of these situations. “Experts” would be dispatched to clean their homes before they faced legal action.
However, the A&E show isn’t without its controversies and criticisms. The show is, in a word, shocking. Some of the subjects of Hoarders could’ve received jail time for things like animal abuse as many keep animals in some of the most unlivable conditions ever seen. As well, the series can be seen as exploitative. Five years after Hoarders first aired, A&E produced a series of follow-up episodes that detailed ex-hoarders’ lives, leaving many fans wondering what happened to some of the show’s most infamous figures.
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Betty Wanted To Charge Gawkers
Season 1, Episode 3 – “Tara/Betty”
In the third episode of the inaugural season of Hoarders, Ohio native Betty’s hoarding habits were putting her sickly husband at risk. He was removed from the property, and a cleanup crew was sent in to take care of the mess. In terms of where Betty is after her Hoarders experience, Betty remained steadfast in her habits. She fought tooth and nail to keep as much of her collection as she could, and, according to Entertainment Weekly, she went back to hoarding just a month after filming concluded. She also semi-sarcastically stated that she planned on charging passers-by for gawking at her property.
Lisa Returned To Hoarding
Season 4, Episode 10 – “Lisa/Bertha”
A season 4 episode of Hoarders featured Lisa, a Virginia resident harboring a dangerous stash of rotting food. Without a working refrigerator, much of her food became maggot-infested, and she resorted to hanging her shopping bags from the ceiling, so rats couldn’t get into them. There have been some Hoarders updates on Lisa, but they’re not too great. Unfortunately, she passed away a few years after her episode, and her family once again called on ex-reality star Matt Paxton to get rid of the extreme clutter she had managed to accumulate following his original cleaning.
Jill Kept A Rotting Pumpkin In Her Living Room
Season 1, Episode 1 – “Jennifer & Ron/Jill”
During the first season of Hoarders, fans were introduced to Jill, a woman with an extreme food-hoarding habit. Unable to determine for herself that her food was rotten and spoiled, she’d keep long-since-perished food out in the open, most memorably displaying a decaying pumpkin in her living room. Unfortunately, in terms of Hoarders, as represented in a follow-up episode and as corroborated by Entertainment Weekly, Jill went back to her hoarding ways soon after her time on the reality show. She even kept another rotting pumpkin in her house, indicating that she hadn’t made any meaningful personal progress.
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Fredd & Fuzzie Love Their Mess
Season 6, Episode 13: “Fuzzie & Fredd/Nancy”
An episode of the show’s sixth season explored the lives of Fredd and Fuzzie, two eccentric artists who harbored a love for all things odd. Collecting things like mannequins, musical instruments, and broken sex toys, theirs was one of the strangest hoards ever showcased in A&E’s reality TV series. When it comes to Hoarders updates, in a follow-up YouTube video released in February 2021, Matt Paxton revealed that he still kept in regular contact with the couple. He theorized that their hoarding was a byproduct of their atypical lifestyle, though he states that they have cleaned up somewhat since they were featured on the show.
Glen Brittner Was Murdered
Season 3, Episode 20 – “Glen/Lisa”
Season three of Hoarders featured Glen Brittner, a California man with a troubling affinity for rats. After his wife passed away, he began keeping them as pets, but they quickly multiplied and took over his house. His home was dangerously disheveled, and his situation made for one of the most shocking episodes of the season. In one of the most shocking and sad Hoarders updates, Glen was tragically murdered in 2015 during a suspected home invasion, and, with little to go on, the case remains unsolved. It’s perhaps the most unfortunate ending to a hoarding case in the A&E series’ history.
The Stank House Was Demolished
Season 9, Episode 2 – “Stanks/Anne”
Milwaukee resident Roger Stank was made to clean his property lest it be demolished. However, in terms of Hoarders updates, even after appearing in an episode of Hoarders, the Stank property never attained an adequate level of cleanliness, and the city issued a raze order. Roger Stank stated in an interview with a local news station that he hadn’t inhabited the home in several years and that vagrants had made the problem worse than it already was. However, despite his wishes to preserve the house, it was demolished in 2019. It’s one of the more stories about people on Hoarders after the show.
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Claire And Vance Have A Library-Sized Book Collection
Season 5, Episode 10 – “Anna/Claire & Vance”
Claire and Vance were a Chicago couple featured in the fifth season of Hoarders. Notorious for their massive book collection, thousands upon thousands of books were flooding their living space. After the city moved to obtain an inspection order and potentially condemn the property, the two had to make drastic changes. However, as seen in a follow-up episode, Claire and Vance ultimately made very few lifestyle changes and still lived in a massive mound of books. The two were shown to be very defensive of their collection, and it didn’t appear as if they were interested in changing their tune.
Verna Was Too Far Gone
Season 5, Episode 9 – “Verna/Joanne”
Santa Cruz resident Verna was forced to sleep in her attic after her home became too cluttered to inhabit. She was featured in a season eight episode of Hoarders, but, by her admission, the house was too far gone, and the clean-up crew may not have been prepared to tackle the challenge of returning her home to a livable state. According to The List, Verna eventually confided in her neighbor that she was dissatisfied with the cleanup process and that it was never adequately finished, causing some to believe that Hoarders isn’t as real as it appears to be.
Deborah And Jim Were Forced To Move Out
Season 2, Episode 6 – “Deborah/Jim”
Deborah and Jim, featured in the second season of the series, were caught in a vicious cycle; Jim struggled with alcohol abuse, a problem which he claimed was exacerbated by Deborah’s hoarding. Meanwhile, Deborah claimed the inverse. When the series producers caught up with the family after their experience on Hoarders, they seemed to be in a somewhat better position. Their house was marginally cleaner, and Jim had been sober for a year at that point. However, he had unfortunately lost his job, and the family ultimately had to move in with relatives.
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Terry’s Love For Cats Ended In Disaster
Season 6, Episode 8 – “Terry/Adelle”
In season six, Hoarders tackled one of the most extreme hoarding situations in the series’ history. Illinois native Terry lived with roughly fifty cats, many of whom were in ill health, but vastly more troubling was her predilection for preserving her deceased pets in her refrigerators. As many as one hundred dead cats were discovered on her property during the Hoarders cleanup. According to The List, only eighteen animals survived, as many had to be put down due to respiratory conditions contracted from the hazardous environment in which they lived. However, Terry never faced criminal charges for animal abuse.
Hoarders Was And Still Is An Incredibly Problematic Show
The Show Hasn’t Really Dealt With The True Issues
While there were many standout cases on Hoarders, the biggest thing to remember about the television show is how problematic it truly is. The fact stands that the subjects of Hoarders’ cases are deeply mentally ill and have their mental illness exploited on television for the sake of shock value. Yes, the conditions that some live in are terrifying and make for an interesting viewing experience. However, these are people with a serious problem that may not be taken all that seriously.
Hoarders does a borderline job of introducing the psychology of hoarding into the mix, as a big part of the process is coercing the subjects to assist in cleanup and make their own decisions about what to throw away. However, a psychological pathology can’t be solved and magically disappears in the span of a one-hour episode. Forcing a cleanup of epic magnitude in 48 hours on someone who has a serious mental illness and little to no treatment can be considered, in a word, cruel. Subjects are forced to make hundreds of decisions while the camera rolls and captures their every expression.
The series sometimes oscillates between explaining that they have a mental illness, and blaming the subjects for giving up on their lives. Hoarders has definitively decided to take on cases of extreme hoarding, in which people are living in conditions that are certifiably dangerous to their health, talking to their subjects for two days, expecting them to turn their entire psychology around in hours, and broadcasting their lives on television as failures to be gawked at by the public. Then, when all is said and done, the cleanup crew leaves, and since most haven’t gotten adequate treatment, the Hoarders subjects’ lives are right back where they started.