Affordable cleaning/hauling co for hoarding situation in LA (Los Angeles: apartment, lease)

[Rowly104]

Hi LA City-Data Members,

I hope some of you will have some suggestions for me. My best friend's mother died last week in her Crenshaw apartment. My friend lives in NYC. She'd thought her mother was visiting friends when she didn't reply to her daily call for a couple of days, but then got nervous and started calling around to get someone to go check on her. It turns out her mother had died and had been lying in the apartment for several days. Her mother had some mental health issues and has left a kind of a hoarding situation. The landlord is taking care of cutting out the area of the carpet where her body lay all that time, but all the junk needs to be cleaned out and hauled away. Can anyone recommend a service that does this that is not exorbitantly expensive? The few places I called that specialize in this sort of service are charging over $3,000/day and say they usually take 2 days to do this size of apartment. There's no way my friend can afford anything like that, but I fear she'll have a nervous breakdown if she tries to deal with all this herself. Also, the apartment is not filthy, just cluttered, so it's principally and bagging and hauling job. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. We really need this information as quickly as possible.

Thank you very much.

[nightlysparrow]

Try this. A little out of town, but way less expensive:

Oxnard Crime Scene Cleanup

[JohnG72]

Why is your friend on the hook for this cost?

[Oleg Bach]

Take your time- get a friend with a pick up and go at it....or just rent a large cube van and empty the place.

[buzzkillb]

$3000/day? Couldn't she fly out and then go down to Home Depot and pick up a few day laborers to throw everything away? They also sell large heavy duty junk garbage bags just for that job. Even enough room to buy some pizza and beer for the cheap help.

[Rowly104]

Thanks, everybody. My friend's already out in LA, but today she's been swamped trying to deal with some sort of confusion as to where the police took her mother's body, so I've been making calls for her from Albuquerque. I started off calling disaster and hoarding clean-up places, because that's what the police suggested. That's where I got the $3000-type quotes. After posting here, I realized basic hauling services are the way to go, as Oleg Bach and buzzkillb advised. The best place I found was called JunkJunk Los Angeles. But then I started thinking along the lines of JohnG72's question. Why should my friend be on the hook for this cost? The apartment is just full of clutter, it's not damaged, or hazardous, or vermin-infested. And the building owner has a $1500 deposit and a pretty great maintenance team. Maybe my friend should just take the few bits of memorabilia she wants to keep and leave the rest to him, telling him to keep the deposit and to feel free to throw away everything. What do you think?

[DontH8Me]

Originally Posted by Rowly104

Thanks, everybody. My friend's already out in LA, but today she's been swamped trying to deal with some sort of confusion as to where the police took her mother's body, so I've been making calls for her from Albuquerque. I started off calling disaster and hoarding clean-up places, because that's what the police suggested. That's where I got the $3000-type quotes. After posting here, I realized basic hauling services are the way to go, as Oleg Bach and buzzkillb advised. The best place I found was called JunkJunk Los Angeles. But then I started thinking along the lines of JohnG72's question. Why should my friend be on the hook for this cost? The apartment is just full of clutter, it's not damaged, or hazardous, or vermin-infested. And the building owner has a $1500 deposit and a pretty great maintenance team. Maybe my friend should just take the few bits of memorabilia she wants to keep and leave the rest to him, telling him to keep the deposit and to feel free to throw away everything. What do you think?

I think your friend should sell the contents of the estate instead of paying to have it removed. I actually know a couple in the area who does estate sales, if you want to DM me a phone number or an email, I can pass it along to them and maybe they can set up something to take care of your friend's deceased mother's things.

[JohnG72]

Originally Posted by Rowly104

Thanks, everybody. My friend's already out in LA, but today she's been swamped trying to deal with some sort of confusion as to where the police took her mother's body, so I've been making calls for her from Albuquerque. I started off calling disaster and hoarding clean-up places, because that's what the police suggested. That's where I got the $3000-type quotes. After posting here, I realized basic hauling services are the way to go, as Oleg Bach and buzzkillb advised. The best place I found was called JunkJunk Los Angeles. But then I started thinking along the lines of JohnG72's question. Why should my friend be on the hook for this cost? The apartment is just full of clutter, it's not damaged, or hazardous, or vermin-infested. And the building owner has a $1500 deposit and a pretty great maintenance team. Maybe my friend should just take the few bits of memorabilia she wants to keep and leave the rest to him, telling him to keep the deposit and to feel free to throw away everything. What do you think?

The things is, your friend cannot possibly be on the hook for this. Only the moms estate, and if your friend doesn't have the money to deal with it, it would seem the mom has little of value other than the deposit(in which case if I were your friend, I'd ask for an itemized bill of the cleanup and anything the deposit is applied to).

[buzzkillb]

Can the property management go after someone not on the lease though?

[Rowly104]

@buzzkillb - No. They might have a shot at making a spouse pay for any expenditures over the deposit, but it turns out, unless they're co-signers, children cannot be held responsible for any debts or other financial obligations of parents.

@DontH8Me - Very kind offer, but the only thing of value in the apartment is an old upright piano. Otherwise there's just tons of newspapers, 40 year old furniture in bad condition, and old clothes. I told my friend not to feel at all bad about just walking away. The landlord has not done a single repair to that place in 28 years. Her poor mother even shelled out for a new fridge when the old one died.

Thanks to all of you again for your helpful suggestions. I hope no one ever requires the services of Oxnard Crime Scene Cleanup, but if anybody ever finds this thread through an online search for that sort of company, nightlysparrow is right, they're significantly less expensive than other disaster cleanup places I called.