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Exterior of new two-story Gospel Village apartment building framed by Spanish moss oak trees. | Annalee Mutz, LkldNow
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Gospel Inc. will cut the ribbon this Friday afternoon, May 15, on 48 new permanent apartments at Gospel Village, the east Lakeland campus that houses people coming out of chronic homelessness.
Gospel Village sign at campus entrance near Main Street and North Lake Parker Avenue, Lakeland. | Annalee Mutz, LkldNow
It’s the biggest expansion in the organization’s history — and for some of the people moving in, it’s the first real home they’ve had in a decade.
“We’ve got some that are literally sleeping on the ground every night,” Executive Director Ray Steadman said, standing outside the newly completed buildings. “Our goal is to get them off the street as quickly as we possibly can.”
What’s opening today
The two new buildings sit on property adjacent to the original Gospel Village campus near the intersection of Main Street and North Lake Parker Avenue. Together the two-story buildings hold 48 one-bedroom apartments, each around 400 square feet. The apartments come fully furnished.
Forty of the apartments will serve residents at or below 30% of the area’s median income, which works out to roughly $18,300 a year.
Inside each unit: granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and white shaker cabinets.
The bathrooms are ADA-compliant, with roll-in showers, grab bars, fold-down benches, and handheld showerheads.
For residents arriving from the streets or shelter, the contrast is hard to overstate.
New apartment kitchen at Gospel Village with stainless appliances and granite countertops. | Annalee Mutz, LkldNow
ADA-compliant bathroom with roll-in shower at Gospel Village permanent supportive housing. | Annalee Mutz, LkldNow
Serving Lakeland’s unhoused for more than 10 years
Polk County’s 2025 point-in-time count recorded 804 people experiencing homelessness — down from 1,207 the year prior, according to the Homeless Coalition of Polk County.
It’s an encouraging trend, though advocates note that point-in-time counts capture a single night and may not reflect the full picture. Permanent supportive housing, affordable homes paired with on-site services, remains the approach with the strongest evidence. Supply still falls well short of need.
Gospel Inc. has been serving Lakeland’s homeless community for more than a decade. It started when founder Brian Seeley arrived at Southeastern University as a student, began spending every day with homeless residents, and eventually moved into the Parker Street neighborhood, inviting those friends to stay.
What started with two people became 40. That grew into a nonprofit and later a village.
“We’re here to walk it out with them,” Steadman said, “whether they want to leave or whether they stay here until they take their last breath.”
One of the men moving in has been homeless for roughly ten years. He told Steadman he knows the last decade wasn’t what it could have been, but he’s certain his next years will be.
Earlier this week, Gospel Inc. received word of a temporary certificate of occupancy — the green light that allowed a small army of volunteers to start moving in furniture that has waited for months, stocked and sorted by unit, in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse.
Volunteers from Church For The One committed to outfitting one unit and ended up furnishing five. The Ruthvens gave Gospel Inc. a discounted rate on the warehouse lease.
Moving in on day one
Exterior of new two-story Gospel Village apartment building framed by Spanish moss oak trees. | Annalee Mutz, LkldNow
Steadman said the goal is to have eight residents in by today.
The first to move in are those with no shelter at all — people sleeping on the ground, in a specific spot they return to each night. One of the eight had been sleeping in that exact way across the street from the campus, he said.
More residents from the streets are expected to move in soon, followed by people living in their cars, then those cycling in and out of shelters like Talbot House and Lighthouse Ministries.
Steadman was careful about the day-one number. “That would be extremely aggressive,” he said. “Don’t hold me to that.” He expects all units to be occupied by mid-June.
Named for those who believed
The Jack and Tina Harrell Family building — named the House of Hope — honors Jack Harrell, a philanthropist who backed the project but passed away last summer before seeing it finished.
“He was kind of that driving force and rallied the philanthropy mindset of this town to get behind the vision and mission,” Steadman said.
The second building was named for the Greg Masters family, with four donors recognized on it: Masters, Greg Riching, Brian Seeley, and Harrell, named again.
A neighborhood, not just housing
Residents pay 40% of their income toward rent. Those without jobs or benefits can work on campus to cover it. But what sets Gospel Village apart isn’t the rent structure.
Thursday night communal dinners, weekend breakfasts, Bible study, art therapy, sewing classes, a community garden, a hen house — programming is built to pull people out of their units and into each other’s lives.
“We don’t want them to go into their unit and isolate,” Steadman said. “We want them to be part of the community.”
He describes the model as drawn from Acts 4:32–35 — the New Testament vision of a community where resources are shared freely and “no one among them was in need.” Those further along in their recovery become a resource for those just arriving.
Some current residents have been at the village four or five years. Steadman said that when he recently walked downtown with two of them and asked if they recognized anyone still living on the streets, they said no. They’d been away from that life long enough that the faces were unfamiliar.
“That’s a testimony,” he said. “If you were to meet them, you would not know they were formerly homeless.”
Getting here wasn’t easy
Gospel Village Executive Director Ray Steadman showing mailboxes outside new apartments. | Annalee Mutz, LkldNow
The complexity of the build caught even Steadman off guard.
Bringing in new underground utilities means coordinating simultaneously with Lakeland Electric, Lakeland Utilities for water and sewer, the city’s stormwater department, the building department, the general contractor, and the original architect, all while navigating right-of-way issues on both ends of the new street.
“I just want to help homeless people,” Steadman said. “I just came to do a job. But I’ve learned a lot that hopefully will be beneficial in the future.”
The infrastructure for all three phases is now in the ground. Adding the third building with another 24 units will be straightforward by comparison.
But it can’t happen until Gospel Inc. solves a space problem. The building currently housing staff, an art studio, a sewing room and program space sits in the footprint needed for phase three.
Gospel Inc. is weighing two options: find a separate property to house offices, which would free up the current space to become green gathering areas with a new pavilion; or build new office space on campus, which would change those plans. Either way, the heavy infrastructure work is done.
A tiny home addition down the line would eventually bring the total units on the campus to around 120.
Insight Polk examines community conditions and solutions in six target areas from UCIndicators.org: economic & employment opportunity, education, housing, food security, transportation & infrastructure, and quality of life.
LkldNow’s Insight Polk independent reporting is made possible by the United Community Indicators Project with funding by GiveWell Community Foundation & United Way of Central Florida. All editorial decisions are made by LkldNow.
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