What hoarding cleanup costs in San Francisco

How we approach it

Three commitments, before any numbers.

Nobody is judged. Our crews have done this many times. They arrive, they work, they leave. There is no commentary and nothing gets discussed with neighbors.

Nothing goes out without a decision. Every heavy-accumulation flat contains documents, photographs, jewellery and cash in places that make sense to the person who put them there and nowhere else. We work in passes, we flag what looks like it matters, and we hand it to you or whoever you have nominated.

You set the pace. Some households want it done in a single long day and some need it over three visits with two weeks between. Both are fine, and the second one costs no more per load.

Why San Francisco produces these jobs

There is a structural reason this city has more heavy-accumulation flats per capita than its size suggests: rent control keeps people in place for decades. A tenancy that started in the 1980s and never ended is a tenancy with forty years of possessions in a flat that was built with almost no storage.

The housing stock compounds it. A Victorian or Edwardian flat has small cupboards, no basement in the conventional sense, and a garage underneath that becomes the overflow. Then the in-law unit becomes the second overflow. Then the back bedroom is not used as a bedroom any more. None of this happens in a year; it happens across a working life, and by the time anyone looks at it clearly there are three rooms and a garage to clear.

The other common route is estate work — an elderly parent or relative in the Sunset, the Richmond or the Excelsior, a house owned since the sixties, and adult children flying in with a week off work.

What it costs

Heavy accumulation is priced by truck fill, because itemizing is not possible and pretending otherwise just wastes everyone's time. The ladder is published and does not move:

Most of these jobs are multiple loads. A one-bedroom flat with heavy accumulation is commonly two full truck loads at $732 + $732 = $1,464. A two-bedroom flat with a garage behind it is commonly three, at $732 + $732 + $732 = $2,196. A single room, or a first pass to make the flat safe to move through, is often one load and sometimes less than a full one.

If material is already bagged — which happens where family have started the work — bag pricing is often cheaper: 20 bags of debris is $259, 30 bags is $385, 40 bags is $449, 50 bags is $575.

Large furniture inside the load prices as part of the truck fill; it is not billed twice.

Why San Francisco access changes the plan

The physical constraint on these jobs here is not the volume. It is the distance between the flat and the truck.

In a typical upper flat the crew is carrying every load down a full flight to a landing, round a turn, down a half-flight to the front door, and then across a pavement to a truck that may be parked twenty or forty feet away because that was the only legal spot. Multiply that by a full truck's worth of material and you understand why these are day-long jobs.

Three San Francisco specifics we plan around:

• Street cleaning windows. Being moved on halfway through a load is the worst thing that can happen on one of these days. Tell us the posted schedule for your side of the block.
• One-way and steep blocks. On a grade the truck picks its spot once and stays there. We would rather know the layout beforehand than improvise.
• Permit zones. Residential permit areas tolerate active loading but not an all-day park. On long jobs we sometimes stage with two shorter truck stints rather than one long one.

None of that changes your price. It changes the shape of the day.

Staging a job across several visits

Doing it in passes is often better, and not only for cost reasons.

Pass one — paths and safety. Clear the routes: the front door to the living room, the living room to the bathroom, the bed to the door. This is usually one load and it changes how the flat feels immediately.

Pass two — the bulk. Furniture, the bulk of stored material, the rooms that are not in use. Usually one to two full loads.

Pass three — the garage or the in-law unit. Almost always the last and almost always underestimated. This is where the damp has done its work and where the decisions are easiest, because most of it is already beyond saving.

Each visit is priced on its own truck fill. There is no penalty for splitting it up, and for many families it is the only way the emotional side of the work is manageable.

What we cannot take, and what to arrange separately

Being straight about this up front saves a difficult conversation on the day. Some categories need specialist handling rather than a junk truck:

• Biohazard. Where there has been an animal problem, human waste or a death in the property, that remediation is a licensed trade and must happen before or alongside us. We will tell you honestly if we think you need it.
• Pest infestation. Active infestation should be treated first, otherwise it travels.
• Hazardous household chemicals beyond ordinary paint. Paint itself we handle — $30 per one-gallon can, $52 per five-gallon bucket.

Everything else — furniture, mattresses, appliances, decades of paper, clothing, kitchenware, the garage — is ordinary work for us.

If you are the landlord, the family member, or the case worker

A large share of the calls we take on these jobs are not from the resident. If you are arranging this for someone else, two things are worth knowing.

First, get consent properly and get it in advance. A crew arriving at a flat where the occupant has not agreed to the work is a bad outcome for everyone, and we will not do it.

Second, the price you are quoted is the price. You can take it to a family meeting, a conservator, an estate solicitor or a building owner and it will not move once the crew sees the flat. That predictability is usually what makes these jobs possible to approve at all.

Frequently asked questions