SAM Shipkovitz viewed his home as his castle, a place where he could pile his possessions from floor to ceiling and answer to no one. Unfortunately, his local hoarding taskforce saw things a little differently. The latest victim of what he brands "America's neatness police", Mr Shipkovitz, a patent lawyer, returned home one evening to find that the locks on his apartment door had been changed. A bright yellow sign stated: "Unfit for human habitation." While his friends considered him a likeable eccentric with a penchant for accumulating junk, to the taskforce ? one of a growing number in America ? Mr Shipkovitz was a danger to himself and his neighbours. In Arlington, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC, the local taskforce has investigated 34 hoarding cases in the past year.