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She was 91 and dying of dementia. City Hall fined her $39K. Now it says her family must pay.

In Coachella, officials buried a great-grandmother in debt by mailing fines to the wrong house, then took her to court after she was dead.

Brett Kelman (The Desert Sun)

Published: 6:12 PM CST January 18, 2018
Updated: 6:12 PM CST January 18, 2018

Dementia had consumed Marjorie Sansom, 91, leaving her helpless in her final years. Her family came to her rescue when she needed them most.

Her daughter bought her groceries when she could no longer shop. Her grandson gave her a place to stay when she could no longer live alone. Her disease made her appear mean and bitter, but they kept her safe and comfortable regardless. They loved her, even when she could no longer remember their names.

And so, when Sansom finally passed away in 2016, she left them one final “thank you.” She willed her daughter and grandson a small plot of land that had been in the family for four generations. It was supposed to be a gift.

Instead, the land has become a burden, saddled with a debt that the family never saw coming.

“I’m an honest person, and to me this feels dishonest,” said Christopher Slade, Sansom’s grandson and legal guardian, who is now being held responsible for his grandmother’s debts. “If I felt that I had to pay these fees – that there was a real reason why – I would do it. But this just isn’t right.”

Marjorie Sansom, 91, was dying of dementia when Coachella officials started fining her for an abandoned property on Seventh Street. (Photo: Courtesy of Sansom's family)

The Sansom property – a vacant lot on Seventh Street in Coachella directly across from Palm View Elementary School – is the centerpiece of an alarming case of unsympathetic bureaucracy that calls into question the methods used by city officials and privatized prosecutors in one of the poorest communities in Southern California's Riverside County.

An extensive review of city and county records revealed that Coachella officials deemed the property a public nuisance because of a homeless camp and illegal dumping on the land in 2015, but never informed Sansom or her guardian of the issues, then fined the old woman despite a public record of her dementia.

Coachella stacked monthly fines on the property by mailing citations and important legal documents to an empty house where Sansom had not lived for years, leaving her family unaware that the dying woman was amassing debt. And finally, when Sansom died and the property was willed to her daughter and grandson, Coachella placed a lien on the vacant lot, saying it would seize the land from the family if they did not pay what the dead woman owed.

Today, that debt has grown to more than $39,000 – more than the acutal value of the land – which Sansom’s heirs say they simply cannot afford. Her daughter, Suzanne Avila, 60, of Indio, is disabled and lives on a fixed income. Her grandson, Slade, 39, lives with his wife, three adopted sons and two more boys under his family’s guardianship in a one-paycheck household in Twentynine Palms.

Neither Avila nor Slade knew that Sansom had been fined, or that they were being held responsible for her debt, or that they were at risk of losing her property, until they were contacted by The Desert Sun in December.

The family has never seen a single citation from Coachella, they said.

“If I had gotten just one of these notices, something would have been done,” Slade said. “We are blindsided by this. I knew the property had gotten a little overgrown, but we didn’t know anyone was dumping on it and we didn’t know the city had taken legal actions.”

“If we didn’t know,” Avila added, “what could we do?”

When asked to comment on the Sansom's property this month, Coachella officials and a city attorney said that they were unaware of the owner's advanced age, mental state, true address or death at any point during the nuisance property case, but still stood by the actions taken by the city. Luis Lopez, Coachella’s development services director, said the city presumed the citations and legal notices it had mailed to Sansom were received – even though they were notified twice by the U.S. Postal Service that the documents were sent to a vacant house.

Christopher Slade and Suzanne Avila, the grandson and daughter of Marjorie Sansom, review citations and legal documents that Coachella mailed to an old address. (Photo: Brett Kelman, The Desert Sun)

Lopez also defends holding Sansom’s heirs responsible for her debt, saying her legal guardian should have been maintaining her land and that funds collected from the lien would “go towards replenishing the public’s money” that was spent to inspect and clean her property. After The Desert Sun noted that a majority of Sansom’s debt came from punitive fines, which are not reimbursement of public money, Lopez said the family should still pay because of their negligence.

“The city believes these fines are justified in this case due to the willful, or at least reckless, disregard for the public safety of the community which includes an elementary school as evidenced by the nuisance on the property,” Lopez wrote in an email statement.

“Additionally, the fines are justified because there was no ‘good faith’ effort by the owners or successors in interest to contact the city, pay part of the citations or abate the nuisance.”

This discovery of the Sansom property case comes three months after Coachella was criticized by defense attorneys and civil rights advocates for using city prosecutors to force exorbitant costs on unsuspecting residents.

In November, a Desert Sun investigation revealed that Silver & Wright, a law firm hired as city prosecutors for Coachella and the neighboring city of Indio, were taking residents to criminal court for tiny crimes – like overgrown weeds or a broken garage door – then charging them thousands in “prosecution fees.” The tactic was denounced by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Institute of Justice, and although Indio officials defended the practice, Coachella leaders said they would rethink the strategy.

James McKinnon, an attorney with Silver & Wright who has filed most of the "prosecution fee" cases in Indio and Coachella, leaves a court hearing on Monday, Nov. 13. (Photo: Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun)

Sansom’s story is different from these previously reported cases because she was never charged in criminal court, but the ingredients are all the same – a nuisance property, code enforcement, Silver & Wright and a staggering bill. Sansom's debt is the largest of any reported so far.

When contacted for comment, Curtis Wright, one of the partners at Silver & Wright, said he believed Coachella might “reconsider” holding Sansom's family responsible for the portion of the debt that stemmed from punitive fines, about $21,000.

But Wright stressed that he still believed Coachella met its legal burden to inform Sansom of her growing debt. If attorneys had known where she actually lived, they would have mailed her a “courtesy notification,” but they had no obligation to do so, he said.

“The city doesn’t have funds to do a manhunt for everybody who has a code enforcement case on their property,” Wright said. “Cities don’t have investigative reporters on payroll to find investment property owners.”

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