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Tempe brings bulldozers onto 'squatter' property, concluding 15-year battle over
Nice to see this saga finally come to an end...excited to see what Tempe does with this parcel and if it will combine the adjoining parcel owned by the state.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/loc...land-ending-property-dispute/2902034001/
Quote:
Steve Sussex heard from his wife on Monday morning that the city had moved bulldozers and other heavy equipment onto the property near downtown Tempe that he had fought a losing battle to claim as his ancestral birthright.
Sussex drove onto the land as naturally as one would pull into their own carport. Except, this time he was met by police officers and city officials, who told him he was trespassing.
It was the violation that the city of Tempe and the state of Arizona claimed Sussex’s ancestors had committed since they moved into the adobe house in the 1890s.
On Monday, as tow trucks prepared to hoist a boat and a motor home and bulldozers lifted debris into trash bins, Sussex was ordered to leave or face arrest.
He sat on the back of his open SUV across the street and watched machines and workers swarm the property where he was raised, bringing a seeming end to the protracted battle that involved decisions and maneuvers from more than 100 years ago.
“I knew this was coming,” he said. “I just didn’t want it right this minute.”
A 15-year battle
Sussex has sensed for weeks that the city would take over the land. It was fated after the end of 15 years of legal battles.
“You can’t fight City Hall,” Sussex said. “I learned that.”
Both the state and the city had asserted that Sussex’s grandparents and great-grandparents were unwelcome intruders on the land when they moved into the adobe home there during Arizona’s Territorial days.
Sussex had gone to battle, first against the state, then against the city.
In the cases, he asserted that his family should have gained title to the land through adverse possession, the legal term for squatters’ rights. Sussex, in essence, argued that since his family had lived on the land for years with no move by the government to boot them, they earned possession of it.
Courts disagreed. Sussex ran out of legal avenues in January when the Arizona Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the order to leave the property brought against him by the city of Tempe.
Then, it was only a matter of time.
The Supreme Court’s denial meant that Tempe’s order stood. Sussex had 30 days to vacate. By the calculations of Sussex’s attorney, Jack Wilenchik, who worked the case pro-bono, that time expired Saturday.
Sussex thought he had negotiated more time. He still had possessions inside the house he wanted to save: pictures, some trophies from his family’s racing team, his grandmother’s 1930s-era sewing machine.
He intended to move them out this weekend, but was hospitalized, he said, with a “heart deal.”
But he thought someone with the city had agreed to give him 30 more days. Which is why he was surprised when his wife told him his grandson had driven by the house and seen city trucks and police vehicles parked on it.
Bulldozers and front-loaders lifted stacks of railroad ties and old furniture into large bins. Other workers cleared tall weeds using lawn equipment.
Sussex drove onto the property around 9 a.m., he said. “My intent was to stop them,” he said.
He said he was threatened with arrest for trespassing. He said he exchanged colorful words with the men speaking to him. But eventually, drove off the property, probably for the last time.
The response from city officials
Tempe officials were tight-lipped.
Two assistant city attorneys said they couldn’t comment on the matter.
A city spokesperson drove to the scene and handed out a fact sheet on the situation, but would not answer questions.
The statement said that the city had gone through Sussex’s attorney, Wilenchik, to work out a deal for additional time, but didn’t hear back.
In an e-mail exchange that Wilenchik provided to The Republic, the city said it would allow Sussex to have the land until April 21. However, the email from the city said, Sussex would have to agree to remove all vehicles, boats, paints, tools and personal items from the property. Among its other provisions, Sussex would agree to not file a further appeal of the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, nor pursue any further legal cases against anyone associated with the city of Tempe.
Wilenchik said that Sussex would not agree to those conditions.
The city’s statement said that it would preserve the historic adobe home on the property, saying it was likely the second-oldest of its kind in the city.
The statement from Tempe also said that there was no information available Monday on how the property might be used in the future.
The land, on the northeast corner of First Street and Farmer Avenue, has become increasingly valuable as it is steps away from Tempe Town Lake, which city officials say is Arizona’s second most popular tourist attraction, behind the Grand Canyon.
That area of Tempe used to resemble the junkyard that Sussex allowed to grow on his property. Tempe residents would use the dry bed of the Salt River as an unofficial dump, the final resting place of old refrigerators and the like.
That changed when Tempe set up inflatable dams and filled a portion of the river channel, creating the man-made lake.
Coupled with a re-vitalized bar and restaurant district along downtown’s Mill Avenue, the area became home to high-end development.
Sussex’s property, a dirt lot filled with vehicles festooned with graffiti, appeared increasingly out of place. It was also highly-visible, located right at the edge of the light rail tracks, making it the view out the picture windows for thousands of passengers who rode past daily.
Sussex, a self-described “junker,” took delight in being an anachronism in the area.
He said he liked that those in the condos across the way had a view of his junkyard. He dismissed complaints from the bar across Farmer Avenue, the Lodge, that smoke from his occasional bonfires disturbed customers watching sports on the high-definition TVs on the patio.
But, in an interview at the property earlier in March, Sussex appeared to be reconciled with leaving.
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m tired of fighting it.”
Sussex’s great-grandfather purchased the adobe home on the property in 1892.
What his great-grandfather apparently didn’t know was that the land that held the house had been made property of Arizona by the federal government. The 1863 Enabling Act that created the Territory of Arizona made certain land ordered held in trust, to be sold off to benefit public education. That land included the parcel where Sussex’s family made his home.
“Poor people have poor ways,” Sussex said on Monday. Both his great-grandparents and his grandparents were poor, he said, and never thought to assert their claim to the property. Maybe it could have all been resolved if they knew how to navigate the system.
Still, Sussex said, for decades, when the land was next to a dry river bed and not valued, nobody bothered them.
The lake changed that. “Anything that’s worth money and they want it, everybody bothers you,” Sussex said.
In 2002, Tempe acquired a portion of the land through a deal with the Southern Pacific railroad.
Then, in 2005, the state land department, partly at the request of Tempe filed suit against Sussex, accusing his family of trespassing on the land for generations.
Sussex’s attorney, Wilenchik, argued in vain that the state took too long to assert its rights, leaving his client no chance to prove his case. The judge ruled for Arizona.
Then, Sussex went on the offensive. He filed a lawsuit against the city of Tempe demanding it sign title over to him. The lawsuit helpfully included a check to cover the city’s anticipated recording fees.
Sussex lost that battle as well. A judge ruled that squatters’ rights don’t apply to governments.
That’s when the city moved to oust him, filing with the court an order of ejectment, booting him from the land the courts had ruled belonged to Tempe.
As of Monday, the parcel was bisected, with half owned by Arizona and the other half owned by Tempe.
It was not clear if city officials would attempt to join the properties. The Arizona portion is state trust land which must, under the state’s constitution, be sold at auction. The statement released by the city on Monday did not address that question.
The workers on Monday did not seem to discriminate between state and city property, aiming to clear the entire parcel.
Sussex watched a friend’s mobile home get towed away, even though he argued it was on state property, not the city. He also watched a red trailer, which he said was filled with his tools, get trucked off.
“I can’t stop it now,” he said.
The city employee, who declined to give his name or department and didn’t want to be photographed, returned a few minutes later with a doll in a wooden case.
Sussex said he wasn’t sure the province of the statues or the doll. But he was glad to have them, a bright spot on a bleak day.
Workers measured an invisible line around the historic adobe house and prepared to hammer fence posts in the ground, erecting a chain-link fence around it.
Sussex, across the street, looked out at the workers surveying his childhood home.
“They want to make sure,” he said, “I don’t get in there again.”
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Last edited by ASU Diablo; Mar 25, 2020 at 6:30 PM.
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