On June 5, an elderly man named Jerry Kulek was evicted from his North Beach apartment for falling two months behind in the rent.
He lived on the streets for three weeks before he collapsed on the sidewalk in front of Washington Square. He had pneumonia and was badly disoriented.
Officer Mark Alvarez, a beat cop who's walked the North Beach streets for over 10 years, heard the radio call and rushed over. He had a feeling it was Kulek, a classic North Beach character - a former Beat poet and hang-about at Caffe Trieste whom Alvarez regularly chatted up. He grabbed Kulek by the arm, straightened him up and called an ambulance.
"If you've got a guy and he's an old-timer," Alvarez said, "somebody should look into giving him some help."
How this 72-year-old man, with a long and reliable track record of paying his rent, ended up on the street is also a tale of why good intentions aren't enough. For all the millions of dollars spent on correcting social ills, in the end it comes down to good people who decide not to look away when someone needs help.
Today, everyone involved in Kulek's case agrees it should have been handled much better. For two months' rent, about $700, his landlord, the nonprofit, city-funded Chinatown Community Development Corp., dumped him on the sidewalk.
The CCDC, which actually gets overall good marks in City Hall for providing affordable housing, admits that there should have been more follow-up. Social workers should have been contacted, services should have been made available.
"We should have had this conversation before," said Gordon Chin, CCDC executive director. "He did sort of fall through the cracks."
And at what price? Kristie Fairchild, executive director of North Beach Citizens, which works with homeless and low-income people, said Kulek's case isn't unusual.
"One or two things happen and they are on the street," she said. "And they start hitting the emergency system - police, health care and services. Compare the cost of all that to two months' rent."
And let's don't let the CCDC completely off the hook. Chin said Thursday that they are "going to do whatever we can to find housing for Mr. Kulek." But the last they saw of him, before this controversy blew up, was leaving their apartment building at the corner of Mason and Washington. Basically their message was, "Goodbye and good luck."
It was a convergence of his friends and neighbors who came together to raise this issue, to push this cause, and to try to get Kulek some help.
"It is so North Beach. That's why this works," Fairchild said.
Kulek certainly fits the mold. He isn't just a North Beach character, he's the prototype. It isn't true that every hip, literate Beat poet came to San Francisco in 1961 driving a '56 Ford Thunderbird, but that's Kulek's story and it seems too perfect to quibble.
He hung out at Caffe Trieste, where he was remembered for putting out a '60s literary magazine called Nexus. It featured Beat poetry, offbeat illustrations and dark, murky prose.
"I've known Jerry for many years," said award-winning poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, North Beach's reigning literary light. "The thing I remember is that whenever he borrowed money from me, he always insisted on paying me back."
Frankly, in recent years there were some problems. Kulek is a bit foggy mentally, and Alvarez said a speech impediment "makes him sound like Popeye." He doesn't walk well anymore. Alvarez is among those who told him he ought to ditch his cane and get a walker.
But Kulek faithfully paid his rent for some 20 years until he became the victim of a financial scam in April. And his friend, San Francisco poet laureate Jack Hirschman, bristles at the suggestions that he might not be mentally capable.
"Of course he sounded fine mentally," said Hirschman, who talked to Kulek in April before a trip to Europe. "I've known him for many years and I trust him as a friend."
Mark Bruno, a volunteer at the local St. Vincent de Paul, took up Kulek's cause and has been visiting him at St. Francis Memorial Hospital.
"He's coherent, kind and independent-minded," said Bruno, who is convinced that Kulek could live on his own.
Could he? Well, he would need some help. Fairchild is contacting in-home social services to give him some aid if and when he gets a new place. And she even sees a silver lining to the controversy.
"This is a perfect example of why we need an eviction protocol for supportive housing," she says. "Right now there isn't one. If we could get that, something good could come out of this."
And Kulek? I wasn't allowed to talk to him in the hospital, but those who have visited say he's grateful for the help.
And he's enjoying the fuss immensely.
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