County joins assisted-living facility fight

Joanne Bock-Ackerman didn't like the way her brother had been treated in the assisted-living facility.

An aeronautics engineer before a car accident left him brain-damaged, he had once been put in a facility where the only stimulation he got was when the staff put him outside to smoke.

So Bock-Ackerman decided to get involved. She started up a small assisted-living facility, then a second in residential neighborhoods in north Pinellas County. Her brother stayed in the second one, a four-person facility in the Countryside Pines neighborhood in Clearwater.

"I was brought up, family takes care of family," said Bock-Ackerman, 56, a New Yorker.

It hasn't proved to be that simple, though.

When Bock-Ackerman converted her inherited home in the Countryside Pines neighborhood in Clearwater into an assisted-living facility, the homeowners association objected. Suddenly, what had seemed like a chance to run a business while helping care for her brother began to turn into a lengthy legal fight.

Now, though, she has an unlikely ally: Pinellas County. Government leaders recently agreed to pick up Bock-Ackerman's legal bills as she prepares to do battle in court.

"I want a letter stating that I am not in any violation whatsoever and can peaceably coexist," she said. "That's it."

After she inherited the property in Countryside Pines in 2006, Bock-Ackerman began renovating it into an assisted-living facility for four disabled people, including her brother, who was then suffering from Parkinson's disease.

That didn't sit well with the Countryside Pines Homeowners' Association.

Association president Gerald Collis wrote to her that she violated the provisions of the deed-restricted community by making renovations without first getting the approval of the association's board of directors.

Undeterred, Bock-Ackerman went ahead with plans for her facility, called Immaculate House at Countryside. On Feb. 8, 2008, the home was issued a certificate for operation as an assisted-living facility by the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration.

That didn't stop the battle with the homeowners association, however. The head of the association's management company twice wrote Bock-Ackerman, telling her to stop operating Immaculate House. Lennard Leighton said association provisions prevent anyone in Countryside Pines from using their homes for business, commercial or any other nonresidential purposes, county documents say.

Also in 2008, an anonymous complaint to the Pinellas County Code Enforcement Division alleged that the assisted-living facility was too close to neighbors' properties and that Bock-Ackerman had not received an exemption from the county board of adjustment.

Both complaints were found to be without merit. A code enforcement officer told the Pinellas County Office of Human Rights that both complaints were filed by Collis, the association president, according to county documents.

Bock-Ackerman has consistently argued that she has done nothing wrong, that a Pinellas County homeowner is allowed to transform his or her property into an assisted-living facility as long as no more than six people live there.

"I had all the building permits," said Bock-Ackerman. "Everything that had to be done was done. It was ridiculous."

Reached at his home, Collis declined to comment, referring questions to the association's attorney, Joseph Cianfrone. He did not return a telephone call to his office.

In a case summary written by William C. Falkner, senior assistant county attorney, Falkner said Cianfrone represented the Tarpon Lake Villages Homeowners Association. Bock-Ackerman's first assisted-living facility was in Tarpon Lakes, and she faced a similar battle there that she eventually won.

"They are taxpayers like you and me," Bock-Ackerman said of her residents. "They're human beings and they deserve to live like a family."