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Capt Tom Polera, an assistant fire marshal and member of the task force, said that reports of hoarding soared after a case in nearby Fairfax County last July in which an 82-year-old woman was found to have 488 cats, 222 of them dead, in her home. In January, Marie Rose, 62, was found dead in Washington state after her husband reported her missing. She had suffocated under piles of clothes, apparently while looking for the telephone.

"There is a difference between a property which is messy and one that can't be used for the purpose for which it was built," said Capt Polera. "We're talking about a room in which you would not be able to find the TV or the couch. It becomes a collateral problem for adjacent neighbours."

At first, Mr Shipkovitz was allowed back for five hours a week to tidy things up. But then the landlord evicted him, and his belongings were loaded into three vans and taken to a storage facility.

The man who describes himself as "the king of mess" is now fighting in the courts for the right to be a hoarder. "It may have looked disorganised, but it was logical, with things of the same type together.

"Now, it's a nightmare. It's a total soup - the stuff I had in the kitchen is mixed with the stuff I had in the bedroom. It just shows the craziness of these goons. They came storming in without a warrant, like a Swat team."

For a month afterwards, Mr Shipkovitz found himself sleeping on a sofa in a friend's basement. Things haven't improved much since then. "I have a client who owns a couple of houses. I wouldn't call it abandoned, but I'm staying in one of his junk piles he's going to rip down."

Court documents state that there was only a 15in-wide path through the two-bedroom flat, which he shared with a friend and which was heaving with "rubbish, debris, paper, boxes, bags and all manner of containers".

Mr Shipkovitz disputed many of the details. The bumper, seat and steering wheel of a Mustang car that were in the sitting room were not his, he said. Neither were the boxes in the bath.

"I have a large amount of engineering and law books. And there were a lot of client files in the kitchen. I guess I had lots of electrical items - thousands, I guess. I'm a techie freak." He conceded that power tools were stashed in the cupboards. "I used to run a construction company," he explained. "But there was nothing unsafe. During the previous fire inspection, the fire marshal said some of my boxes that were side by side should be stacked so there was a 28in-wide path, which was done." His case has been thrown out by a United States district court, but he has lodged an appeal.

Henry St John Fitzgerald, a lawyer and friend of Mr Shipkovitz, who is helping him with his case, said: "Sam is a smart guy. He has a PhD in electrical engineering and a law degree. He's odd and a hoarder. It's an aberration to have that much junk for absolutely no reason. But whose business is it?"

Randy Frost, a psychology professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, who specialises in obsessive compulsive behaviour, said that up to 1.4 million Americans suffered from an irrational desire to hoard.

"Hoarders tend to concentrate on non-essential details and have difficulty making any kind of decision.

"They tend to organise things visually and spatially. The problem is that it's too taxing on the memory, because you cannot remember everything you own and where it's located."

Mr Shipkovitz sees things more simply. "They've screwed up my life big time and they're not going to get away with it," he said. "I'm going to sue every one of these jackasses."

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