BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A Downtown Brooklyn
husband-and-husband couple
has made it their business to
clean out some of the city’s
worst hoarder homes.
Julian Bannister and Yannick
Jules-Bannister, cofounders
of the company New
Beginning Cleaners, say they
have come to see how people’s
quarters are both a safe haven
and an expression of their
mental woes.
“Once you go home, you
take your work home, you take
your family argument home,”
said Julian Bannister. “It becomes
a thing of how bad are
your thoughts and how taken
over are you from them.”
The entrepreneurs
launched their company some
four years ago — initially as a
maid service — but their very
fi rst job proved to be more
challenging than a mere surface
scrub.
“Our fi rst case, I remember
well, was fl oor-to-ceiling
garbage, there was no way to
walk, the woman was sleeping
on magazines and books and
you couldn’t even see a coach
nor a bed — we just could not
leave her in that situation,”
Bannister recalled.
The two men and another
co-worker cleared out the
woman’s Bronx apartment in
four days, carrying out hundreds
Make-A-Wish®
Metro New York
COURIER L 18 IFE, MARCH 20-26, 2020
bags of trash via the
building’s elevator for 12-13
hours each day.
“Yannick was standing in
the elevator behind the bags
— 20 bags — squished in, I
would go in the next elevator,
squished in,” Bannister said.
“We were taking out 300 bags
of garbage from a one-bedroom
apartment.”
In the following years, they
cleared out many more homes,
wading through piles of rubbish,
such as utility bills from
the 1960s and several dead
pets, but what surprised them
most was the clean appearance
of some hoarders when
leaving their chaotic abodes.
“They are some of the most
well-dressed people,” he said.
One of several memorable
cases the cleaners encountered
was a man who dressed
in clean suits and sneakers,
but once the scrubbers entered
his apartment, they found he
was storing hundreds of bottles
of his own urine, due to issues
with his bowels.
“You’re talking about 450
bottles of pee we counted,”
Bannister said. “It was the
most toxic place we ever had.”
The man suffered from
arthritis that made it hard
for him to do some ordinary
tasks, leading him to spiral
into depression and his girl-
A hoarder’s bedroom in East New
York.
Husbands Yannick Jules-Bannister and Julian Bannister clean some of
the city’s messiest hoarder homes. Photos by New Beginning Cleaners
Letting go of the past
Cleaners offer new beginning for city’s worst hoarders
friend leaving him. The Bannisters
grew concerned when
they heard from a neighbor
that the man once had two
dogs but that, eventually, they
had stopped barking.
One of their workers soon
stumbled upon a grizzly fi nd
when they discovered a perfectly
severed head of a Rottweiler
beneath piles of trash,
but not the rest of the hound or
the second pooch.
“He’s always stated to this
day that he doesn’t know how
the dog’s head got decapitated
perfectly,” Bannister said. “We
never found the other one.”
Check out Brooklyn Paper Radio
online wherever you get your podcasts
for an extended conversation with
Julian Bannister and Yannick Jules-
Bannister about their work cleaning
up hoarder homes in Brooklyn!
NOTICE OF A JOINT PUBLIC HEARING of the Franchise and Concession Review Committee and the New York
City Department of Parks and Recreation to be held on April 6, 2020 at 22 Reade Street, Spector Hall, Borough
of Manhattan, commencing at 2:30 p.m. relative to:
INTENT TO AWARD as a concession for the operation, maintenance and management of a year-round tennis
facility at the Parade Ground, Prospect Park, Brooklyn for a fifteen (15) year term, with three (3) one-year renewal
options, to Prospect Park Alliance, Inc. Compensation to the City will be as follows: for each operating year of
the license, Prospect Park Alliance, Inc. shall pay the City a fee consisting of the higher of a guaranteed minimum
annual fee versus 10% of Gross Receipts. When Gross Receipts exceed $3.3M for any given year PPA will pay
15% of Gross Receipts. The Minimum Annual Fee for each operating year are as follows: Year 1: $270,000; Year
2: $275,400; Year 3: $280,908; Year 4: $286,526; Year 5: $292,257; Year 6: 298,102; Year 7: $304,064; Year 8:
$310, 145; Year 9: $316,348; Year 10: $322,675; Year 11: $329,128; Year 12: $335,711; Year 13: $342,425; Year
14: $349,274; Year 15: $356,259; Year 16 (Renewal Option 1): $363,384; Year 17 (Renewal Option 2): $370,652;
Year 18 (Renewal Option 3): $378,065
A draft copy of the agreement may be reviewed or obtained at no cost, commencing Monday, March 16, 2020
through Monday, April 6, 2020, between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm, excluding weekends and holidays at the
NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, located at 830 Fifth Avenue, Room 313, New York, NY 10065.
This location is accessible to individuals using wheelchairs or other mobility devices. For further information on
accessibility or to make a request for accommodations, such as sign language interpretation services, please
contact the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS) via e-mail at DisabilityAffairs@mocs.nyc.gov or via phone
at (212) 788-0010. Any person requiring reasonable accommodation for the public hearing should contact MOCS
at least three (3) business days in advance of the hearing to ensure availability.
TELECOMMUNICATION DEVICE FOR THE DEAF (TDD) 212-504-4115
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benefiting
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* Free Vehicle Pickup ANYWHERE
* We Accept Most Vehicles Running or Not
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* Car Donation Foundation d/b/a Wheels For Wishes. To learn more about our programs or
Call:(917) 336-1254
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