HOMELESS SAN FRANCISCO HOMELESS

S.F. man is homeless -- by choice
He has a trust fund but prefers life on the street, off the wagon
Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 2, 2004

Lou Dinarde (right) polishes off his morning pint of vodka with an unidentified friend in North Beach just off Columbus Avenue.


For years, there have been rumors among the homeless downtown that a drifter in North Beach was sleeping in the gutter while he had all the money he needed in the bank.

It's true. That drifter is 68-year-old Lou Dinarde.

Dinarde is homeless, he often sleeps in the gutter or on the sidewalk, and he has plenty of cash -- a trust fund that at one point was worth nearly $700,000. He draws $2,500 a month from the fund plus $500 a month in Social Security.

Dinarde's had this money rolling in since 1992, when his mother died and her assets were sold to create the trust.

Trouble is, he can't resist the bottle. He abandoned his career as a carpenter three decades ago for life on the streets.

"I'm rich, but I like it out here. I ain't sleeping inside," Dinarde mumbled through sips of vodka last summer, as he sat with legs splayed in front of St. Francis of Assisi Church. "You can't make me."

Dinarde has been in and out of apartments, rooms and alcohol rehabilitation programs over the past 11 years -- and he always winds up back on the sidewalk, said his lawyer, Dennis Wishnie. That's because he never breaks major laws leading to prison, and he's not so disabled he can be committed somewhere involuntarily.

"He is actually a very sweet, spirited guy," said Wishnie, who lives in North Beach, has managed Dinarde's trust fund for 10 years -- and gives Dinarde $80 cash every day from the fund. "He's bright, but he is homeless by choice.

"I've gotten him into housing over a dozen times, but it never worked. He just walks away, leaving the key in the door. He's basically the only homeless guy I ever heard of who has assets.

"He's like a unicorn -- a magical figure."

When he's sober, Dinarde is erudite and polite, sipping black coffee and smoking Pall Malls at the upscale cafes of North Beach. Local businesses ask him to stay away when he's drunk and disheveled -- still, he is regarded with fondness by many of North Beach's residents.

"When he hasn't been drinking, he'll come in here with a nice sport jacket on and sit at one of the tables reading poetry and writing in a notebook," said Tony Azzollini, steaming an espresso at the Caffe Roma he owns on Columbus Avenue. "I tell him, 'Lou, you have more money than I do! Why don't you live inside?'

"He just laughs. Then a day or two later, we see him on Union Street, drunk and out cold." Azzollini shook his head sadly. "It's that alcohol. It's such a bad disease."

Dinarde, a stout fellow with bushy gray eyebrows and beard, was raised in Connecticut and wandered to San Francisco 30 years ago after ditching a carpentry career. He wanted to be a poet, so he went to North Beach, which he heard was a hangout for writers. He's been homeless there ever since, except for the occasional stay inside -- most notably at a small North Beach flat he had for a few months, 10 years ago, with his late wife, Kate.

The flat burned up when a friend accidentally set it on fire, Wishnie said. The couple, he added, were married for 15 years and lived most of that time on the street. Kate, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic, died of a bacterial infection five years ago, and Dinarde still mourns her "as if she just passed yesterday," Wishnie said.

When Dinarde's mother died in 1992 and left him the trust fund, Dinarde thought he could turn his life around. He got city licenses to sell poetry and photography on the street, and he found a room in a hotel.

But he couldn't let go of the liquor.

"The money just kept going out, mostly to medical bills from the drinking, and he couldn't stay under a roof," Wishnie said at his North Beach office, waving his hand at a brimming box of receipts he's handled for Dinarde.

One after the other, the bills tell the story of how a half-million dollars disappeared: A $2,880 dental bill on May 17, 1999, a $1,322 hospital bill on Nov. 13, 1998, a $1,770 hospital bill on Dec. 2, 2000.

The biggest bill: A $146,145.78 check made out to San Francisco General Hospital on Nov. 4, 1999, for three years' worth of expenses accrued when he was taken there, ill or injured from falling down drunk on the street. Wishnie's fee for administering the fund is about $1,500 a year.

Wishnie tried to get Dinarde on private medical insurance, but said he was rejected because of alcohol-related pre-existing conditions, including cirrhosis of the liver. Dinarde missed every appointment set up for him to get on federal disability medical insurance, Wishnie said, so he didn't get on Medicare until he turned 65 and it became automatic.

By then, the economic damage was deep. The trust fund, worth $676,000 in 1992, is now worth $145,000.

"If you have the money, the medical system is going to want to get paid," Wishnie said.

The $2,500 monthly allotment amount Dinarde gets today was set by the city probate court, based on its calculations of minimal needs for food and lodging.

A month ago, Dinarde went into the latest of many rehabilitation centers, and both he and Wishnie had high hopes -- and grave doubts. Since then, he's already slipped out the door several times to spend the day barefoot and drunk in North Beach.

"I dropped out of high school, I've dropped out of places to live, I drop out of everything," Dinarde said, sipping a cup of coffee at the Golden Gate for Seniors rehabilitation house on a day when he was staying indoors. "I'm really a poet. I'd like to have a studio to write in, but I love the outside."

Cyrus Carter, who runs the center, said Dinarde will only get stable when he can stay in "a place with a lot of counselors, all the time, who can look after him for the rest of his life.

"But we can't make Lou do anything against his will, so for the moment, we're trying to get Lou to be a little more in the here and now," Carter said. "He lives in the past a bit. It's hard for him."

Dinarde went outside and sat on the steps. He tipped back his head and closed his eyes, soaking in the afternoon sun.

He had been working on new poetry, but he wasn't ready to share it.

"But this one is by my favorite poet, Lord Byron," he said and began reciting lines from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" solemnly, carefully forming the words through a mouth that has no teeth.

"I have not loved the world, nor the world me. ...

"I stood among them, but not of them,

"In a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts."