It's time to walk.
Yesterday I posted a photo of a doorway packed with garbage, and I suggested that I knew the cause. Perhaps my garbage-and-heat induced delirium had led me to be flip enough to suggest that I could discern why someone would live with a garage full of trash. There is too much psychology there for me to truly understand (any help out there, gentle readers?). What I did find is the suggestion of divorce.
Divorce has historically been one of the leading causes of foreclosure (along with loss of job and loss of health). Traditionally, divorce has led to foreclosure as the spouse who remains in the home cannot make the payments on a now too-large dwelling. At this residence, another room provided me with income tax returns for both spouses, indicating that each one was employed and making around $50,000 annually, which allowed them to live comfortably in this suburban enclave. Remove one income from that equation, though, and the remaining spouse is seen with just about a doubling in their monthly payment. Oftentimes, the increased demand that this financial situation causes leads to foreclosure.
It’s a question of the chicken or the egg. Did familial unrest lead to a rupture of the nucleus, and thus the ensuing foreclosure? Or did dire economic conditions at home raise tensions so high that both home and relationship were abandoned? With the limited puzzle pieces available to us at the trashout, we can only speculate, and hope that neither of these conditions ever touches us.
You may find this link about hoarding informative.