Hoarders: What Really Happened To Rodger & Gerri Stank From Season 9?
For more than a dozen years, A&E's "Hoarders" has offered viewers a revealing look into the homes and lives of people living with the disorder that leads them to compulsively accumulate material goods. Often these situations become hazardous to the health and safety of the hoarders and their communities, as in the case of Rodger and Gerri Stank of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who appeared in Season 9, Episode 2, in 2016. After more than five decades in their home, it had become stacked to the ceiling with trash, food, holiday decorations, and unused clothing and furniture.
Their three children appeared on the episode and joined the "Hoarders" crew for the cleanup effort, something their son Jay said he had done before. "I've helped them clean many times," he said. "But when I left, a week or two later it was all back ... It's almost like standing on a beach trying to hold back a wave."
In 2016, a city building inspector declared the home uninhabitable due to the bathroom and kitchen being inaccessible, and the Stank family rallied one last time to try and save the home. But according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that effort failed and the house was demolished in 2019 at Rodger and Gerri's expense. After the house was destroyed, Rodger and Gerri kept ownership of the land where it stood and moved to one of their other properties in Milwaukee.
Jay Stank expressed frustration with the City of Milwaukee's bureaucracy
In the episode, Jay Stank compared the cleanup effort to standing on a beach holding a single grain of sand and then being forced to discuss disposing of every other grain of sand on that beach. He later expressed frustration with the city, saying his parents missed an early filing deadline and were only given a brief window to retrieve their belongings during a particularly cold winter stretch. "No one has a greater right over one's life and property than themselves," he said. "This could happen to anybody."
An attorney for the Stank family filed an appeal to the city's demolition order, but it was dismissed before being heard. Chris Kraco, supervisor of the condemnation section of Milwaukee's Department of Neighborhood Services, said, "Given the length of time it would take for the Court of Appeals to impose a briefing schedule and decide the case, the raze would long before have happened."
Despite the multiple failed attempts to clean up the house, Gerri Stank was still understandably upset to see it destroyed. "I'm so hurt that I don't know what to say," she said. "They can stop right now. They don't have to bulldoze the house."