The Mansion: A $5.8 Million Dollar Dump or a Diamond in the Rough?

Ms. Cheng lives alone in a luxurious villa located in Huangpu District, Shanghai, China, where the price per square meter is 230,000 yuan (over 830 million VND). She has turned her villa into a garbage dump for the past three years.

According to local media, the house Ms. Cheng lives in is worth more than 36 million yuan (approximately 130 billion VND), but it is not luxurious at all; instead, it is filled with garbage, flies, and cockroaches. Even the public elevator outside her house is stacked with daily necessities, causing a persistent foul odor to permeate the entire building.

A neighbor revealed that due to such an unbearable environment, some neighbors had no choice but to sell their houses and move out.

In an interview, Ms. Cheng enthusiastically stated that she was cleaning and that others wanted to send her to a mental hospital, after which she refused to share anything further.

The staff of the Tang Jialuan Residential Area on Laoximen Street stated that they could not find any records of Ms. Cheng having a mental illness. As early as 2023, they had communicated with Ms. Cheng and her family about the hoarding situation and had reached a consensus with her daughter. However, in the end, the daughter changed her mind and decided not to intervene. She said, “I don’t care about my mother’s business.”

According to the neighborhood committee staff, over the past three years, they have repeatedly persuaded Ms. Cheng and have cleaned up the accumulated garbage at least 100 times. Large-scale cleaning activities involving special street security forces, police, and community volunteers have also been carried out no less than ten times, with “at least dozens of bags of garbage being cleaned up each time.”

However, not long after the clean-up efforts, the situation would revert to its previous state. The staff attributed this to Ms. Cheng’s lifestyle, which had also driven her husband away.

Due to the increasingly hot weather and to eliminate fire hazards, the neighborhood committee staff contacted multiple parties, resulting in Ms. Cheng’s husband agreeing to accompany her to psychological counseling and therapy sessions. It is hoped that he can effectively cooperate with the local community and persuade Ms. Cheng to stop hoarding garbage as soon as possible.