Timothy Walters has spoken out about the months he spent secretly living inside the Albany middle school where he worked, insisting he “had nowhere else to go.”
Walters, 36, told The Post that his decision to turn a fourth-floor storage room at Hackett Middle School into a makeshift apartment came after his living situation with family collapsed. He had been staying with his younger sister and her boyfriend, but their need for space forced him out. Rather than tell his sister the truth, he let her believe he had found a legitimate apartment while he moved into the building he had spent 17 years cleaning.
The room above the auditorium was already cluttered with discarded furniture when Walters claimed it. “The layout had a futon bed and a bunch of old, older chairs and some furniture that’s just been sitting in there for who knows how long,” he told CBS 6. “And I ended up cleaning it out and bringing in multiple beds, mini fridge.” Over time, he assembled what amounted to a studio apartment, complete with assorted furniture and enough space for weekend custody visits from his four teenage children. Those visits went unnoticed because no staff worked the building on weekends.
Walters’ financial situation had left him cornered. He told The Post he was paying child support for his four children, which drained his resources despite a $64,000 base salary that reached roughly $80,000 with overtime in 2025. “I was already paying my partner child support for our four teenage children and I didn’t have enough to get my own place,” he said. The custodian had previously lived with an uncle in a trailer park and, at the time of his disclosures, was on a waiting list for his own unit there.
The arrangement might have continued indefinitely had district officials not been reviewing security footage for an unrelated matter. In the last week of April, investigators probing custodians suspected of filing bogus overtime claims spotted Walters on camera — constantly present, never leaving. He was not accused of overtime fraud himself, but his perpetual presence in the building triggered questions that exposed his living situation.
Walters came forward about the apartment last October, according to the timeline that emerged from district records. The district suspended him without pay in May while the investigation proceeded, and he formally resigned on June 23, according to district spokesman Ron Lesko as reported by the Times Union.
Local police initially charged Walters with trespassing, though those charges were later dropped. Since losing his job and his hidden housing, Walters has received two job offers and has been staying with his uncle in the trailer park while awaiting his own unit. His sister launched a GoFundMe campaign to help him establish new housing.
Throughout the fallout, Walters has been direct about his choices. “I knew what I was doing was wrong,” he told The Post. “But I didn’t know what to do. When your back is against the wall, sometimes you end up making choices you probably shouldn’t have made.”
