After years of court battles, Tempe 'squatter' preparing to vacate junkyard land worth nearly $2 million
Richard Ruelas, Arizona Republic Published 7:12 p.m. MT March 9, 2020
He has waged a 15-year battle to claim title to the land holding the home his great-grandfather lived in more than a century ago. But Steve Sussex has decided to stop battling.
After years fighting the city of Tempe and the state of Arizona over the pre-statehood history of the land they wanted to claim from him, Sussex is preparing to walk away and not look back.
“That’s it, I’m tired of fighting it,” Sussex said during an interview in front of the adobe house where his great-grandparents lived. The home, built in 1877, ranks among the oldest properties in the Phoenix area.
Sussex was on his property Saturday morning to greet a busload of people touring Tempe’s historic adobe properties, led by former Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman.
The interior of the home, though, was not well-preserved. It was a mess of lawn furniture, boxes of clothes and videotapes and trash, the leftover belongings of past renters.
Light rail trains, which carry thousands of people each day, zoom past the property eight times an hour, treating passengers to a rotating display of vehicles in various states of repair, including a bus splashed in graffiti.
His junkyard grew ever more noticeable in recent years as it contrasted with a seemingly endless rise of bars, restaurants and condominiums in the fast-growing blocks of downtown Tempe that surround it.
Sussex could see development surrounding him and figured he would have to leave eventually. He just wanted to be paid for his family’s legacy. Instead, he’s walking away with nothing.
“You have to do what you have to do,” Sussex said, about his pending ouster. “When you lose, you lose.”
Sussex had argued that he had rights to the parcel, on the northeast corner of First Street and Farmer Avenue, because his family had lived there for such a long time and that neither the state of Arizona nor the city of Tempe took action to boot them.
Sussex argued that he owned the land through adverse possession, the legal term for squatters’ rights. Sussex has said he preferred being called an adverse possessor, rather than a squatter.
The land was less valuable in earlier decades when it sat adjacent to the empty Salt River bed on the north end of the city. Once Tempe filled the riverbed to create Tempe Town Lake and surrounded it with parks and high-rise developments, the junkyard became a prime piece of real estate.
Sussex battled both the state of Arizona and the city of Tempe in court over the land.
Slowly, rulings took what he saw as his birthright from him.
One set of court hearings granted the state one portion of the property. Another set of hearings made the other portion, the one that included the adobe house, the official property of the city.
The latest court loss came in January when the Arizona Supreme Court denied a request to hear the case. That let stand the order allowing the city to oust Sussex from the property, giving him 30 days to vacate.
Sussex said he planned to be out before then, with no fuss.
“I’ll leave on my own,” Sussex said. A lifelong Tempe resident, he said he knows too many people on the city council. “I don’t want to make their lives any more miserable.”
Sussex said that only one motor home on the property was his. A boat and other vehicles belonged to friends who may or may not come get them.
Everything else, he said, would be the city’s problem.
“They can have the rest and clean it up themselves,” Sussex said.
Sussex has one last legal avenue: a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is a long shot given that the nation’s highest court only agrees to review a small percentage of the cases sent to it. Wilenchik said he was still considering whether to file the petition.
With Sussex deciding to leave the property, even if the nation’s highest court took the case, it would be largely academic.
Wilenchik, who has worked the case for free, said he had received an email from the city attorney for Tempe in January, after the Arizona Supreme Court declined the case, that asserted the ejectment order. Wilenchik said he asked for an extension on the order, but has received no response.
Sussex sounded unsure whether he would be on the property on the day of ejectment. He said he might show up and meet any city officials on the land that day and walk them around. But, at other times during the interview, he said it might be best to stay away.
It is not clear what Tempe plans to do with the property.
No Tempe official would agree to be interviewed. A spokesperson, in an email, said only that the city was reviewing its available options after the end of the appellate process.
The land, both the state and city-owned parcels, have a combined value of nearly $2 million, according to the county assessor’s office.
In 1880 or 1882, a man named Ramon Gonzalez developed the property by building a house made of adobe. He likely picked the spot, according to an essay on Tempe’s historic preservation website, website, because he worked for Charles Hayden, who ran a ferry and flour mill
In 1892, Gonzalez sold the house to Jesus Martinez, the great-grandfather of Sussex, marking the family’s claim to the land.
But, seemingly unbeknownst to both men, the land that the adobe house was on had been made the property of the territory of Arizona. Under the 1863 enabling act that created the territory, the land was ordered to be held in trust by Arizona and sold off to fund public education.
For decades, the Sussexes lived on the property undisturbed. Sussex added lighting and plumbing to parts of the home, building additions on to it. After his grandmother, Belen died, he ran a contracting business there. A self-described “junker” with an affinity for racing, he also tinkered with cars and allowed friends to park vehicles there.
At the time, the land was in a neglected part of Tempe that had a gritty, industrial feel. The Salt River in the mountains east of Phoenix had been dammed up. Where the river used to run freely, powering the mill that gave the city's main street its name, it became a dry bed that Tempe residents used as an unofficial dump.
“Nobody said a peep about this piece of property,” Sussex said, “until they found out it was worth money.”
In the late 1980s, Tempe started devising a plan to fill the dry river with water, creating a lake.
In 1988, Tempe attempted to acquire the property at issue from the state of Arizona, buying it at an auction. But the sale ended up in a complicated dispute, with the Southern Pacific Railroad asserting its rights to part of the land. The deal was finally settled in 2002.
The resulting deal ended up bisecting the land. Tempe owned the eastern side of the land, the parcel nearest the railroad tracks and containing the historic house. Arizona owned the western half, largely vacant, though the property line did cut through a room where Sussex used to host poker games.
Arizona filed suit against Sussex in 2005, accusing him of trespassing on state trust land. Sussex’s attorney, Wilenchik, argued that the state should have asserted its rights to the land decades ago, giving Sussex a fighting chance to prove title. That argument didn’t carry the day. Arizona was awarded the land by the trial court and Sussex’s appeals weren’t successful.
Then, Sussex went on the offensive. In 2015, he filed a suit against the city of Tempe, claiming he owned the remaining portion through adverse possession. As part of the suit, he enclosed a check for $5 to cover the cost of the city filing paperwork granting him the title.
The courts ruled Sussex’s case didn’t have merit, that squatters’ rights didn’t apply when held against the government.
Steve Sussex gives a tour of the property his family has occupied for 137 years on the corner of First Street and Farmer Avenue. Sussex is in a dispute with Tempe over rights to the parcel. Ben Moffat/azcentral.com
In 2016, Tempe filed a motion to eject Sussex. In this case, Wilenchik argued, on behalf of Sussex, that though Sussex couldn’t prove ownership, neither could the city. When the case ended up before the Arizona Court of Appeals in 2019, one of the three judges hearing the arguments, Randall Howe, asked from the bench, “Who the hell owns this property, then?”
The appeals court ruled that Tempe did. Sussex asked the Arizona Supreme Court to hear the case. But, in January, the high court declined, giving Sussex no more legal levers to pull to stop his ouster.
Sussex turns 80 in early April. He’s hoping his attorney, Wilenchik, could get the city to let him stay on the property until then. He’s thinking of a combination going-away party and birthday celebration.
“That’d be fun,” he said.
Though, he’s not getting his hopes up. Sussex seemed drained of sentiment about the ordeal.
He said his daughter was asking him if he would miss the property. “So far,” he said, “I’m just done. I’ve had it.
“I don’t even know if I’ll drive down First Street anymore.”
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