DC Woman Evicted From Home Was A Hoarder Updated: Thursday, 23 Sep 2010, 8:18 AM EDT Published : Thursday, 23 Sep 2010, 7:58 AM EDT By Sherri Ly/myfoxdc
WASHINGTON - An eviction in D.C. turned into a bigger job than anyone could have ever expected. The woman being kicked out is a hoarder. What was in her home was enough to fill ten houses. All of it wound up piled up on both sides of her street and a block down another.
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It took a small army to move it all. A moving company hauled away about half of it. The city loaded up seven dump trucks and took the rest to a storage facility.
"I've never, never, never seen anything like this in my life," said neighbor Rhonda Carter.
Furniture, old electronics, box after box of stuff by the thousands were piled up on both sides of the street for two blocks, stacked four feet high.
"My thought was maybe about 15 people had just gotten set out," said Donnell Thompkins, who came by to visit his brother.
He soon learned this belongs to one woman, Eliose Diaz. She's jobless and was evicted from her 11th Street home for failing to pay rent.
"Im not going to throw it away because I collected this for a long time and its hard to collect it to throw it away," said Diaz.
She says she's been collecting all of her belongings for 15 years to send it to the poor in Venezuela, and claims she has sent a container of donations to Latin America before.
On Tuesday, when crews showed up to evict Diaz, it took more than 10 hours to remove all her belongings.
"They couldn't get in the house from the front door. They made a line down to the street. They were passing every little piece by piece until they dug themselves into the house," said Thomas Thompkins, who lives across the street.
A Virginia moving company volunteered to take away as much as possible and store it, filling up three moving trucks. That's only half of it.
"When we took the corner down here at 11th Street and seen the stuff lined up all the way down the street, then we knew we were getting into something," said Jason Pulsifer, with JK Moving & Storage.
Neighbors complained to the city about trash and debris in the backyard attracting rats and possums. The Department of Regulatory Affairs says she was issued a violation in April. Soon after, neighbors say the backyard was cleaned up. They had no idea how bad it was inside the rowhouse.
"How will all that stuff fit into one house unless it was packed to the ceiling and every crack was filled," said Donnell Thompkins.
The city is providing shelter to Diaz and a tenant who lived there too.
"We've had mental health services contact her and they're going to become involved because there are obviously psychological issues here," said D.C. Council Member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1).
Diaz says she hasn't worked in two years. Movers had asked her to take what was most important, but she refused to part with all but a few things.
"God is good. He is going to provide me new jobs and new things," she vowed.
Normally in an eviction, what someone can't take gets thrown into the dump. The city has given Diaz a reprieve, agreeing to take the rest of her belongings to a storage facility, but it's unclear how long the city would hold it.
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