{"id":34671,"date":"2023-08-16T12:46:07","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T16:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=34671"},"modified":"2023-08-16T12:46:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T16:46:12","slug":"lakeland-man-faces-over-95k-in-fines-from-polk-county-for-housing-homeless-on-his-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/08\/16\/lakeland-man-faces-over-95k-in-fines-from-polk-county-for-housing-homeless-on-his-property\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland man faces over $95K in fines from Polk County for housing homeless on his property"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

70-year-old Virgil Robinson has lived on his Lakeland land for over 20 years since the property was left to him after the previous owner died.<\/p>\n\n\n

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According to the Polk County Property Appraiser, in February 2023, the land was put into his name, as was more than $95,000 in violation fines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The county has seemed to go out of [its] way to make life hard for me,” Robinson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fines began last year after a complaint was made about the property’s condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, Robinson has allowed people who are homeless to set up tents and live in their vehicles and RVs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

County code enforcement is concerned that the property does not have running water or electricity and is run off a generator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day Robinson does not comply with the county, he is fined $250 daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Mostly, it has been good people down on their luck,” Robinson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Industrial buildings surround Robinson’s property, and the land backs up to railroad tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He feels he’s being pressured by the county and fined so someone can scoop in and buy his land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autumn Fenton is the Code Enforcement Director with Polk County and said that is not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She truly wants to see the area cleaned up, and she said the property’s condition poses a health concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There is some junk and debris\u2014distressed, abandoned vehicles. One of the main concerns was that there was leaking sewage. I believe there was an open septic tank on the property,” Fenton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before 1991, the property was zoned as residential, but as the years progressed, Fenton said the county rezoned it as industrial to make it consistent with the land around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fenton understands Robinson’s push to help people in need. However, she said the manner in which he is doing it may cause more harm than good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I would just caution people that it’s important to be a good neighbor. That even though someone does have a good intention of helping a group of individuals that clearly need some housing, there is assistance out there for that,” Fenton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fenton said the county is working with Robinson and said there are options for him to pay 5% of his land value. An application must be filled out with a fee of $230 to move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, Fenton said, until the RVs, tents, and those who occupy them are removed, Robinson is not compliant and will continue to face a daily $250 fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a vendor is sent out to clean the property, the costs could surpass $250.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Robinson, he said if it comes down to it, he would ask those on his property to leave, but as to when that’s still unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

70-year-old Virgil Robinson has lived on his Lakeland land for over 20 years since the property was left to him after the previous owner died. According to the Polk County… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[5693],"class_list":["post-34671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-man-faces-over-95k-in-fines-from-polk-county-for-housing-homeless-on-his-property"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}