Hoarding by proxy

[Shehasadiamondinthesky]

I divorced my ex husband years ago but my adult son who isn't close to him tells me things and I listen but don't judge.
My ex husband is a hoarder, when we were married he would fill the house with crap and bring suitcases full of it to "sort out" while we were on holiday - none of it got sorted of course it just got piled up around the hotel room and shifted from one side to the other.
He made himself homeless by gambling £300,000 away in around 3 years. This was his half of the property we owned, I used my half to buy myself and my son a new home. He was violent towards us too so we had to leave.
As he lives in bedsits and moves around a lot he has no room to hoard so apparently he asks people if they will keep his stuff in their garage or outbuilding for a bit to help him out them fills them with his hoard. Some of his friends have had his stuff cluttering up their homes for years and are too polite to ask him to shift it. Its all junk of course.
He tries to offload stuff onto me and my son from time to time but of course that a big no. i won't entertain the idea.
It turns out that he has his hoard in at least 6 peoples homes, I was shocked to hear this. His powers of persuasion must be epic.
My son is mortified and wants to get psychiatric help for him but surely this kind of help is only available if my ex asks for it which he has no intention of doing ever.
Has anyone else ever heard of hoarding by proxy? It seems bizarre to me.

It's not by proxy - he's just using their space.

I honestly can see why it's intriguing you, but really why do you care?
He is/was a gambler/abuser/hoarder and now you don't have to deal with any of it. Yay you!

Yep, not your problem any longer.
If your son feels responsible for it in some way, maybe suggest he has some counselling. Sounds like he's had a rough ride with all of the things that preceded the spilt anyway, and would benefit.

My PILs do this. They filled up their previous house. Spent their money on stuff instead of paying the mortgage. Had to move, obviously, into rented accommodation. It's much smaller. They filled a full sized skip twice before they left, plus numerous trips to the tip, charity shops, etc. They spend their time going to coffee shops & wandering around shops. DD usually gets about 1-2 bin bags full of stuff from them every Christmas & birthday. Plus regularly in between. It's not all new, or suitable, or clean. Recently, toddler books for a 9 year old advanced reader. Sometimes things are broken before PILs even buy them. Since the pandemic they can't reasonably come over unannounced 2-3 times a week with their latest purchases, it's been great. We don't have a car, so struggle to get rid of it.

There is definitely such a thing as hoarding by proxy.