Miami Herald

Published Monday, June 4, 2001

Aging population brings the `pack rat syndrome'

Agencies see rise in self-neglect cases

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES jcharles@herald.com

In North Miami, a 65-year-old woman is removed from her home after police find her covered in rat bites and surrounded by 17 cats and their feces, as well as dirty clothes and garbage.

In Miami, a 91-year-old woman and her son are taken from their Flagami home after an anonymous tipster calls the Health Department to report garbage piled high to the ceiling, overflowing through the front window.

And in Hollywood, neighbors and paramedics report that an 80-year-old woman is trapped under six feet of books, magazines, pots and receipts.

Social workers call it ``environmental neglect.'' Police and firefighters call it the ``pack rat syndrome'' -- a growing problem brought on by an aging South Florida population.

``If you were to go door to door around here, you would be stunned,'' said Carol Sargent, a North Miami Police officer with the city's community resource unit.

In addition to investigating elder abuse and exploitation, police and social workers say they are now devoting just as much time to rescuing seniors from garbage-filled homes and unsanitary, unhealthy conditions.

``What we are seeing is an exaggeration of a lifelong pattern whereby the person's age, disability and emotional state may make them unable to properly take care of the items they have collected,'' said Bruce Hyman, a Fort Lauderdale psychologist who has seen countless such cases.

In some instances, Hyman said, older citizens are also suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, or feelings of depression and loneliness in which material things and animals replace their need for people.

``The collecting becomes an activity that provides satisfaction in the absence of relationships,'' Hyman said.

The Florida Department of Children and Families, which tracks elder abuse through the state's 1-800-96-ABUSE hot line, doesn't have any hard and fast numbers detailing environmental neglect cases, compared to other types of self-neglect cases.

TREND DEVELOPS

Still, Josefina Swiman, program administrator for the agency's adult services, said social workers in the field are noticing a trend. For instance, of the 3,498 abuse cases called into the hot line last year in Miami-Dade County, 1,259, or 36 percent, were self-neglect cases. The majority of them, Swiman said, fall into the environmental neglect category.

``The numbers are increasing,'' Swiman said.

Those people need help with everything from emptying the trash to taking a bath.

``I don't think they are living this way by choice,'' said Mij Sezzin, a social worker with the North Miami Foundation for Senior Citizens' Services, which provides food and other services to seniors. ``They become more and more isolated, and we don't have a good mechanism in place for giving them help.''

That's the case with 78-year-old Carmen Rosa, who takes care of her disabled daughter and three grandchildren.

Rosa's four-room wooden house in uncorporated Miami-Dade near Miami Shores is falling apart. The floor is collapsing. The windows are gone. The ceiling beams are rotting. Clothes that are not stacked in Raisin Bran and Frito Lay boxes are scattered over old mattresses.

``I do my best,'' said Rosa, who admits that she would welcome help in cleaning up her tiny $400-a-month house. ``The house is a mess. I want to be clean.''

Not everyone, however, is receptive to getting help.

When Sargent, the North Miami Police officer, and partner Patricia Pereira found 81-year-old Walter Dixon Jr. eight weeks ago, Dixon hadn't taken a bath in three months. Gangrene had set in his legs, and the bedroom was scattered with bedpans that needed to be emptied. Magazines, catalogs and papers -- some dating back decades -- cluttered the rooms.

``I get a lot of mail,'' said Dixon, a ham radio operator. ``I'm just like everybody else -- I put it down and look at it later.''

With the help of police and the North Miami Foundation, Dixon has been able to get a nurse's aide to come by three times a day to feed and bathe him. She also cleans the house. Dixon is not always cooperative.

``I don't dare let her touch some of it,'' Dixon said.

Christie Treiber, the community services liaison for Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue, said Dixon's reaction isn't unusual.

THEIR CHOICE

``I've come to learn that helping is not always the answer,'' she said. ``The helping has been very disruptive to that person's life. It's not what they want. There is a comfort level to living how they want and not having anyone intrude on that.

``If they are mentally competent, they have the right to live that way,'' Treiber said. ``The answer is getting services in long before anything gets that way.''

Another answer lies in Tallahassee, Treiber said, in the form of a $100,000 line item in the Children and Families budget.

The item, if signed by Gov. Jeb Bush, would fund an adult protection team in Miami-Dade.

In situations where someone may refuse to leave or accept help, for instance, the team of experts would be available to determine whether the person should leave or what kind of services should be provided.

``It's a very, very complicated issue,'' Treiber said. ``The majority of what we see is people who just need help, and it's getting more and more difficult to get those people help.''

-- Anonymous, June 04, 2001

Answers

When we moved to Florida, we left hubby's mother at her home in Washington State. We could not get her to come down here Finally,when she was down to 79 lbs, smoking 3 packs aday, my husband went up there and sold the place out from under her. Packed what she needed and left the rest of there. He sold the place to a friend who got rid of everything. The place literally looked like a landfill as she put everything into green garbage bags and stacked it. She came down here to a lovely wing built onto our home just for her. Believe me, she never in her life had anything so nice. I had funished everything new. Her life has been to keep the blinds drawn and the lights on and the TV on 24 hours a day. Every now and then when she is out in the pool, I go through her drawers and pull out ketchup bottles, salad dressing bottles, all washed and put away. Under the bed are 1/2 ginger ale boxes full of used kleenex. I do all her grocery shopping now as she is unable to, so I put it all away and REMOVE THE PLASTIC bags. When we were having those fires two years ago, I made her pack a bug out bag in the event we had to evacuate. Well....I tired of seeing that suit case setting there and I unpacked it. It was full of plastic bottles, card board cores out of TP and paper towels. I almost wish we had had to evacuate and she had had to use her bug out supplies. She hadn't even packed her meds. This didn't start when she became elderly. This started as a young person. I can understand a pack rat, but why would you save dirty kleenex? I have a gal come in and clean for me once a week and she makes sure she goes through the closets, etc and cleans them out. And now she IS getting feeble both physically and mentally. She sits in front of the jets in the swimming pool everyday and really enjoys that. But one day she will come out with all her clothes on and get into the pool and the next day she has a bikini on. (God knows where it came from. I didn't buy it for her...she had it stashed away in her clothes from God knows when. But she has been a good lesson for me and I am starting to divest myself of lots and lots of "stuff" and trying to get down to the very basics. We have no children to leave it too and neither one of us deserve to be stuck with it all when the other dies. So our plans are to get rid of everything, sell the house and hit the road again in our trailer and head for Mexico. Not right away...we can't do that while my MIL is still with us and chubby hubby has 3 years to retirement. But the rule here is don't buy anything unless it enhances the sale of the house. I don't want to become like my MIL!! Taz

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2001

``If they are mentally competent, they have the right to live that way,'' Treiber said. ``The answer is getting services in long before anything gets that way.''

This is a report that hit close to home! My elderly relative recently passed away, and I had the task of cleaning out his house -- almost wall-to-wall trash, some of it requiring special handling with rubber gloves. I took out close to a dozen van-fulls before I could let the realtor see the place.

I wonder if it's also possibly a generational thing: those who were hardest hit by the depression are most prone to this behavior? I have an elderly neighbor in Columbus who is starting to show the early symptoms -- floor to ceiling garbage in her garage, not letting anyone in her house. I've had several talks with her son and daughter about this behavior. They said that she lost everything in the Depression and fears that our coming recession will leave her with only what she has collected. Unfortunately, I don't believe that washed out empty jars and plastic bottles are really going to be of that much use, certainly not hundreds of them, anyway.

If I'm wrong about that last comment, please enlighten me.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

I have finally broken myself of the habit of saving jars. I also used to save twist ties, string, reusable used envelopes, rubber bands, on and on. It's because when you're very poor you need those jars to store things in--can't afford Tupperware--and you don't have that many because you can't afford to buy "luxuries" like pickles and preserves. The twist ties are for tying the plastic produce bags you saved to put stuff in because you can't afford ziplocks. This habit of reusing becomes strongly ingrained, so that when you can afford more stuff, you suddenly realize you have a cabinet full of mason-type jars and the twist ties are taking over one of the drawers and the plastic produce bags are busting out of the bag you keep them in!

I was showing the new people next door how to prune the roses when I noticed the climbers were held in place by joined twist ties. Those roses, good named types from Jackson and Perkins, were grown by an older woman who outlived three husbands (but not their hefty life insurance policies!) and owned lots of rental property and a new Cadillac. She vacationed in Europe at least once a year. Plant ties are readily available and inexpensive but that twist tie habit was impossible to break!

It really is only in the last five years that I've been able to put jars in the recycling bin without feeling very frivolous and wasteful. I'm getting better about the catalogues. . .

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

Why spend money on plant ties when the twist ties are free?

I like to keep them in an old clear jar. Adds a bit of color, ya know?

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

These were paper-wrapped wire ties--not good for tender rose canes, paper will disintegrate, wire will cut into canes. Need nice plastic wrapped garden ties. Raffia is nice if tied off neatly.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

It was pretty depressing (and thoroughly exhausting) to close down my parents home when they moved in with me. I think mother's excuse is the depression era bit, just can't bear to toss anything that might be useful. Dad, OTOH, seems to have loss the incentive to take care of his stuff was he started going blind. My approach now is to try to keep it from accumulating. Dad is far more obliging than mother in letting me straighten out their rooms. In her case I have to go through her drawers on a regular basis, because she no longer believes that keeping meats (or opened cans of catfood) in long-term unrefrigerated storage is a Bad Thing.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

Seems like a case could be made that these folks are not competent. This can be a PG(13) topic....

40 years or so ago, in Greenville, Ohio, a very reclusive old lady died at home. No one noticed (I kid you not) until an odor alerted the people next door. The police found over fifty cats in the house, who (lacking any food) had seriously reduced her body mass. The floor was inches deep in excrement. Eventually the house had to be burned, there was no way to restore it to use.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

We used to use strips cut from expired nylon stockings for the tomato stems. Free, slightly elastic, cause no damage to the plants. Not too charming visually, but who snoops in your garden?

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

As long as you don't use the crotches, I s'pose...

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Barefoot.. who dares to go where even I won't go...

You owe me a new keyboard dude...

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Silly Carl, Barefoot knows that you reserve the crotches to protect the squash plants from borers.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001