How much of too much? What inspections data say about residential clutter as a housing problem

Abstract

How big of a housing problem is residential clutter? In this paper, we draw upon inspections data in Vancouver to both estimate the size of the problem and detail how it is observed and constituted through municipal regulatory processes. We contrast the inspections approach to residential clutter with the mental health approach, which focuses on hoarding disorder. Inspections data indicate the problem of residential clutter is potentially larger than might be expected by the epidemiology of hoarding disorder, and also point toward the many risks associated with clutter. Using our best estimate, approximately seven per cent of low-income, dense, single-room occupancy (SRO) housing units inspected were identified by inspectors as problematically cluttered, indicating a sizable problem. Larger buildings and those managed as social housing were more likely than other buildings to have many units identified as problematically cluttered. Strikingly, for given buildings, estimates of problematic clutter tended to remain relatively stable across time, inspector, and inspection method.

Keywords:

• Housing policy
• property condition
• homelessness
• clutter
• hazards
• hoarding

Acknowledgments

The authors received significant assistance in completing this study from both a UBC Hampton grant and a Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant. The authors also wish to thank the Property Use Inspections office of the City of Vancouver.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The most recent (2011) census recorded 603 502 residents in the City of Vancouver, and 2 313 328 residents in the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

2 Reports from these three property use inspectors were used because they were identified as being conscientious and consistent in their reporting by their superiors, raising the issue that inspectors may vary in their performance.

3 Data from an additional building were dropped from this phase due to missing protocol.

4 The factors were not fully crossed, preventing identification of unique contributions of any one of these factors to prevalence estimates.

5 T-tests for building differences equal zero across management: Phase I p = .02, Phase II p = .03.

6 In both cases, significant at p < .001 across rooms.

7 There were inspectors within the “Other Inspectors” category who did not perform many SRO inspections, but had similarly high prevalence estimates of problem clutter within those units they did inspect.

8 Averaged across inspections for buildings with multiple inspections in Phase I.

9 Inspector F did not inspect any of the 63 buildings for which there were repeat inspections.

10 Using 2011 count results, which are closer to the time of inspections.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UBC Hampton grant and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.