A School Custodian Secretly Lived in the Building He Cleaned for Six Months & the Story Behind His Decision Has the Internet Divided

Sep 04, 2026 by apost team

For six months, nobody noticed.

Timothy Walters, 36, had worked for the Albany City School District for 17 years — most recently as the head custodian at William S. Hackett Middle School in Albany, New York. He knew the building better than almost anyone. In October 2025, facing financial pressures he felt he had no other answer to, he moved into a fourth-floor storage space above the school auditorium.

The room had been sitting empty long enough that nobody thought to check it. Walters added to it over the weeks that followed: two beds, a mini-fridge, a griddle, an air fryer. He described it, without self-pity, as a studio apartment. He lived there from October 2025 until late April 2026 — more than six months — and was never discovered by school staff.

He was discovered by a security camera. Not because anyone had been looking for him, but because school officials had begun reviewing CCTV footage as part of a separate investigation into custodians who had allegedly falsified overtime claims. Walters had not filed false overtime. But the footage showed him in the building at all hours. The investigators followed the footage. It led them to his room.

"I knew what I was doing was wrong," he told the New York Post afterward. "But I didn't know what to do." He added: "When your back is against the wall, sometimes you end up making choices you probably shouldn't have made."

He was suspended with pay. A trespassing charge was brought and later dropped. He resigned on June 23, 2026. The story resurfaced in national outlets in late August when the New York Post published a detailed account of the case.

The financial picture Walters described in subsequent interviews was specific. He had earned nearly $80,000 in 2025 — including overtime — but paid approximately $2,000 per month in child support. After taxes, health insurance, food, and transportation, he said, he did not have enough left over for the upfront costs associated with renting an apartment. He had been staying with his sister and her husband. When they needed their space back, he said: "I had nowhere else to go."

He shared custody of four children. On weekends when they were with him, he brought them to the school. They slept in the fourth-floor studio he had built above the auditorium. Locals who later wrote about the story called it a "broom with a view."

Walters was not accused of overtime fraud. The employees who had falsified overtime claims were separately disciplined but remain employed. Walters, who did not defraud the district and kept the building he lived in clean and operational throughout the six months, resigned his position and is now looking for new work.

"I have a great work ethic, I got skills enough to make it in this world," he told CBS6. "I know it comes down to confidence, and I'm very confident myself."

The story generated an immediate and divided response online. Some questioned how a person could live in a school building for six months undetected. Others focused on the housing affordability dimension — the fact that a man earning nearly $80,000 a year felt he had no other option. "Sometimes you end up making choices you probably shouldn't have made," Walters said. It was, by any reading, an honest thing to say. His sister setup a a GoFundMe page for him where donations are flowing in generously. 

apost.com

Do you think Timothy Walters's story says more about one man's choices or about the housing pressures facing working people across America? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and anyone following this story.

Watch the full interview on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzNe2y5gTxU