Support to address hoarding in Edmonton is running out
The co-founder of the Hoarding Disorder Foundation of Alberta says her organization will run out of funding by the end of the year, even though an estimated 20,000 to 59,000 people in Edmonton struggle with hoarding disorder or behaviours.
Stacy Walker, who helped create the foundation in 2019, said the organization last received funding in 2022 from the City of Edmonton, in the form of a Community Safety and Well-being grant for $89,760. The grant funded training for therapists and professional organizers on trauma-informed support for people in hoarding situations, plus eight "clear-outs" of homes where someone had hoarded. The organization later got funding at the end of 2023 and in April 2024 from the city to continue running its support group, its core service, but that money will run out in December.
"We're unable to offer an awful lot in terms of services because there's no funding, and (the association) is a very young and new organization," Walker told Taproot. "We can't offer a lot in terms of services unless it's grant-funded … We need funding for programming so that we can keep the (support) group running, because that's the absolute minimum that we need to do."
Hoarding is different from most pop-culture portrayals on reality TV shows. The disorder is when someone accumulates things, often without intention or awareness. This in turn can strain relationships, create safety hazards, and prevent a person from performing basic functions in their home such as cooking, bathing, or sleeping in their bed.
Hoarding situations that reach a crisis level can strain public services, including calls to the fire department, the healthcare system, police, and community agencies, Walker said. Hoarding can require the removal of children from a home. Fires at hoarded properties are hard to extinguish, hospital stays may need to be extended if a patient's home is found uninhabitable due to hoarding, and service hours tend to be high for people who hoard because of the behaviour's complexity.
Walker said addressing these challenges proactively can save the system both time and cost. "One client in a hoarded situation would perhaps work with three to seven different agencies," Walker said. "We're talking about between 850 and 1,000 service hours."
Hoarding is not widely understood but more common than many know, Walker said. "We don't keep any stats at an all in Canada, as far as we're aware," she said. "We're using statistics out of the other countries and … the number is 2% to 6% of the population would qualify for a (hoarding disorder) diagnosis." In Edmonton, that would mean up to 59,000 people could be affected.
That figure comes from data collection projects in 2016 and 2018 that Walker helped the Edmonton Hoarding Coalition with. The coalition comprises Sage Seniors Association, divisions of Alberta Health Services, the City of Edmonton, and providers who work in legal, clean-up, and psychiatric services, among other groups.
Walker said Sage's "foresight" within the coalition has been powerful but that its work has not picked up again since the COVID-19 pandemic. Sage is working "off the side of their desk because they don't have funding, either," Walker said.
