Greenwich’s Hoarding Task Force is busier than you might think
By Tatiana Flowers September 29, 2019
GREENWICH — In 2012, firefighters rushed into an Old Greenwich home after the house was set ablaze with a mother and son in it. Officials later found that the son, Dean Verboven, had died by suicide. His mother, Barbara Verboven, survived after hospitalization in the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital.
Two months before the incident, town Department of Human Services workers had contacted the Verbovens after a neighbor reported the interior of their home was nearly impassable because of severe hoarding. Just hours before the fire erupted, a town worker was scheduled to check in on the condition of the home. The timing was uncanny, in the worst of ways, because the condition of the home hampered firefighters’ ability to pull the Verbovens from the burning structure.
Their story is perhaps the best-known case of hoarding in town. But it’s certainly not the only one. Nor the last.
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