Rubbish and waste was piled up to the benchtop by a hoarder in Karori.

Authorities are being confronted by residents stock-piling their own urine and faeces, homes riddled with rodents and being forced to clamber over layers of rotting rubbish as victims of suburbia's secret sickness require intervention.

More than 30 residents living in Wellington City Council-owned properties have "some form of hoarding issue" with fears last month's quakes and aftershocks could uncover more people suffering in silence.

"I think most people who are hoarders don't necessarily come through and seek help. It's not until something happens like an earthquake - as we saw in Christchurch - where they're forced to come out of the woodwork," Dr Dougal Sutherland of Victoria University's School of Psychology said.

CAMERON BURNELL/STUFF Victoria University's Dr Dougal Sutherland says more cases of hoarding came to light in Christchurch following the earthquake in February 2011.

"They had the same thing in New Orleans [after Hurricane Katrina]. They had to move people out of their houses and, all of a sudden, came across all these people with hoarding issues who wouldn't have come to their attention unless that had happened."

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Data released by Wellington City Council showed the Public Health Team were involved in eight instances of hoarding on private property–since 2011 - two properties required repeat intervention, in addition to the cases in city housing.

SUPPLIED Soiled bedding inside the home of a Wellington hoarder.

"We've had one person stockpile their own urine because their toilet had stopped working," team leader Andrew Taylor said.

He said there had also been a case where a man had "placed a value" on his faecal matter and had 20L pails of it stacked up in his hallway. "You had to step over them and hope that you didn't catch your feet as you went through the house."

"I've had a job where there were rodents running all the way through the property, but the owner had died sitting in a little chair, the only space available in his house. It had got to the point where the owner had filled his whole house to the extent where all he could do was shuffle in sideways."

SUPPLIED Hundreds of aluminium cans were piled high in the bedroom of a Karori house lived in by a person with a hoarding disorder.

Taylor said the hardest part of the job was trying to support hoarders who do not want help. "It's so sad. How does it come to a point where they're soiling themselves in bed in a flat stacked full of rubbish?"

Details of hoarding in Wellington have come to light after firefighters in rural Waikato were forced to don masks to carry the body of hoarder Jennifer Kirk out of her home early this morning.

Pukete Fire Brigade Senior Station officer Cameron Grylls said it was like a scene from the TV show, Hoarders, "but five times worse".

SUPPLIED There was barely standing room in a Karori property which was deemed to be a health risk by authorities.

Hutt City Council issued 10 cleansing orders over the past five years, where hoarding was "found to be a health nuisance", while Porirua City Council had one hoarding case in October 2014.

Sutherland said hoarding, a form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), could be hard to characterise, but generally involved problems with acquiring and getting rid of unnecessary items, as well as difficulties with disorganisation and clutter.

Hoarders often developed personal attachments to those items they collected.

SUPPLIED A toilet inside a Karori house which was deemed to be a public health risk by Wellington City Council.

"If you look at it in a very practical sense, it's probably [becomes a problem] when it causes some health difficulties or some impairment. I do know of cases in the US where people have died in their houses after having piles tip over on them or bookcases that have just leaned over."

It was difficult to say how many hoarders lived with the disorder, but the Mental Health Foundation estimated that more than 200,000 people suffered from anxiety disorders including OCD. Many hoarders also suffer from depression.

Housing New Zealand said it has dealt with hoarders living in some of its Wellington properties and in some cases, worked with other social agencies to provide support.

Providing support to a friend or family member who has a hoarding disorder can be fraught with difficulty, but Sutherland said people should resist their natural tendency to do a mass clean-up.

"It typically doesn't work, because it overlooks the connection that people have with the objects and overlooks the whole reason why they're hoarding in the first place.

"It's a slow process of helping the person to build motivation to make those decisions for themselves and perhaps work with them very gently to modify their beliefs around the specialness and the uniqueness of every single item that they have."

Getting professional guidance can help, particularly as many hoarders do not consider their compulsion a problem which can be a barrier to treatment.

"People need to make us aware of [hoarding cases]. They're tricky jobs, but they're not jobs we should not be turning away from," Taylor said.

​HOARDING

* Defined as "the persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them."

* Hoarders become distressed at the thought of getting rid of items.

* Hoarders often don't see their compulsion as an issue, making treatment challenging.

* Symptoms include excessive attachment to possessions, cluttered living spaces, difficulty with organisation, moving items from pile to pile without throwing them out, letting items pile up to unsanitary levels, low social interaction and, shame or embarrassment.

SOURCE: Mayo Clinic