Lakeland man continues to face fines while helping homeless

LAKELAND, Fla. — A man from Lakeland who is using his property to help the homeless was slammed with thousands of dollars in fines for not being in compliance with Polk County.

Virgil Robinson, 71, first began this mission in August of 2023. He was initially fined $90,000, but fast forward a little more than a year later, those fines have more than doubled.

Robinson's moral dilemma continues to face challenges, even before the holidays, as Polk County Code Enforcement was at Robinson's property on Thursday to clean it up again.

While officials were doing their job, Robinson said he's not sure of what's going to happen to the 17 people living on his property that don't have a home elsewhere.

"My idea was that if a person stayed here six months without rent, they could save up and an apartment," Robinson said. "Now, I'm about $200,000 in violation. During the last cleanup, I received a fine of $6,000."

The 71-year-old spends his $1,500 pension check to get back into compliance. Even though he believes what he's doing is a helpful thing, he also understands why code enforcement keeps showing up at his property.

Code enforcement officials have asked Robinson multiple times when he will stop letting people live on his property. The 71-year-old stood firm on his stance and wanted to convince code enforcement that what he was doing was to help people who didn't have many options.

"I might have bit off more than I can chew," Robinson said. "But if the American people were to just look at things, I don't know how all of this can work. You run people off of public or private land. Then what do you do? Arrest them?"

Polk County officials told ABC Action News that Robinson was in violation for open storage, excessive junk, trash and debris. The county doesn't have an estimate of how much Thursday's cleanup will fall onto Robinson in fines, but they did say they have no plans to remove the people or trailers off his property at the moment.