Posted on 01/03/2004 9:16:31 AM PST by Cathryn Crawford
Urban myth turns into a reality on the streets of San Francisco - Homeless Poet Has Shrinking Fortune
January 3, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO – One of San Francisco's enduring urban myths – the homeless man with the sizable trust fund – turned out to be more than just a figment of the collective imagination.
Lou Dinarde, 68, is a deep-pockets drifter with a drinking problem who reads poetry at North Beach cafes over coffee when he's sober.
However, he spends most of his time polishing off bottles of stronger stuff sprawled out on the sidewalk, with the knowledge he had a $700,000 trust fund in the bank.
The money came from his mother, who died in 1992 after having her assets sold to create the fund.
The cash has dwindled to $150,000, sapped by Dinarde's many stays at local hospitals after being picked up ill or injured, and by his several attempts at sobering up at rehabilitation centers, said the lawyer who helps Dinarde manage bills.
Dinarde has slept on the streets for years by choice, his lawyer said.
"I'm rich, but I like it out here. I ain't sleeping inside," said Dinarde last summer, finishing off his morning vodka in front of St. Francis of Assisi Church. "You can't make me."
His lawyer, Dennis Wishnie, has certainly tried.
Wishnie told the San Francisco Chronicle that he has tried to get Dinarde medical insurance, but was rejected because of pre-existing conditions related to drinking, including cirrhosis of the liver. Dinarde missed appointments to get federal disability medical insurance, the lawyer said.
Dinarde was automatically added to Medicare when he was 65.
He never breaks major laws that lead to prison, and he's not so disabled he can be committed somewhere involuntarily, Wishnie said. "He's a very sweet, very spirited guy," said the lawyer, who has managed Dinarde's money for 10 years.
Wishnie gives him a daily allotment of $80 from the fund, and has tried to put him into apartments, hotel rooms and rehab dozens of times over the years. Dinarde also gets $500 a month in Social Security.
"He just walks away, leaving the key in the door. He's like a unicorn – a magical figure," said Wishnie, who charges Dinarde a modest $1,500 annually to administer the account.
Dinarde has been homeless for about 30 years, since he abandoned his career as a carpenter and moved to San Francisco, where he wanted to write poetry.
Once, 10 years ago, he got a North Beach flat, which he shared with his wife, Kate. The flat caught fire, Wishnie said, and the couple went back to living in the streets.
They were together for 15 years, until his wife died five years ago of a bacterial infection. Wishnie said Dinarde still mourns her "as if she had died yesterday."
Dinarde, who is once again at a rehabilitation center, said he's working on new poetry, but wasn't ready to share it yet.
Instead, he offered up a few verses from one of his favorites, Lord Byron:
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me . . . ," he recited. "I stood among them, but not of them, in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts."
Copyright 2004 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
I don't drink anything stronger than pop.
'Course, Pop would drink just about anything.
I'm not seeing the benefit of his management. I guess the mom or atty did not have a plan to have power of atty over bills, expenses, meds etc.. It can be done.. IE:meds could include the kind that makes him puke when he drinks. :(
He saw this man repeatedly sitting on the median strip of Montrose and he worried about him. He eventually talked to the man and learned that he actually did have money and did not want Chris' "help".
I know another area poet/drunk who has been known to panhandle (or at least hit up friends and strangers for sympathy cash) yet there is a lot to suggest that he really is wealthy.
A lot of the 1960s unemployed "radicals" were trust fund kids too.
A bum in this State paying his own medical bills? Now I know that this story is a myth!
As opposed to the free emergency room care he could get if he was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. The world is turned upside down.
The bright side of this is that once he's broke, he'll still get free medical care, and his lifestyle won't have to change at all . . . .
Ditto. Though I admit sometimes I do kick back and go for a ginger-ale on occasion. Strictly for medicinal purposes, you understand. (grin)
Besides, life's too short to drink cheap booze.
Why can't we build hospices and have them incarcerated therein (for life if need be)? I know it sounds a little draconian but it is not. People who are by and large homeless have mental problems and are not able to make decisions for themselves and thus forfeit the right to liberty because the ability to choose is a basis of liberty. Homless on the street are a danger to society and thuse even in a free society should become the wards of the state.
We have homeless for 2 reasons. Because (some) civil libertarians think people have a right to be homeless and (some) conservatives don't want to pay for hospice like institutions because it smacks of a Johnsonian Great Society/New Deal socialism (which it is not).
Thus in the friction between these two wrong headed factions a crack develops in the fabric of society in which the mental deficient homeless fall through.
We have just such a place here in California. We call it the Legislature.
Well, I don't know if this guy is mentally ill in the classical sense. He's probably just an alcoholic.
Here in California, we once institutionalized our folks who were seriously mentally ill. Presumably because of the cost, Governor Reagan reversed that policy during his first term as governor. Here's a short quote from his second term inaugural address in 1971: "It is the same in mental health where the number of hospitalized mentally ill patients is half what it was four years ago."
It happened during Reagan's term but I believe the ACLU was responsible. Hospitalizing people against their will interferred with their civil rights.
Like I said, we have homeless for 2 reasons. Because (some) civil libertarians think people have a right to be homeless and (some) conservatives don't want to pay for hospice like institutions because it smacks of a Johnsonian Great Society/New Deal socialism (which it is not).
Thus in the friction between these two wrong headed factions a crack develops in the fabric of society in which the mental deficient homeless fall through.
If Reagan was responsible-the ACLU helped. Shame on both of them. Shame on us as a people for allowing this.
My position as you can see is classic conservative in the Christian tradition.
What we have now is scum bags on the left that want to teach homeless how to dumpster dump and how to live will sleeping on sewer heating grates and those on the (fake) right that want to not pay for homeless deficient populations (possible lifetime) hospitalization and those on the evil left that would consider this a violation of their rights.
How can we be considered a Judeo-Christian nation when we allow such un-Christian policies?
Well, I don't know if the ACLU was supporting him in those days, but it was Governor Reagan who signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which became effective in January, 1969. Governor Reagan wasn't apologizing in 1971 when he said, "It is the same in mental health where the number of hospitalized mentally ill patients is half what it was four years ago." At least at the time, he believed that, on balance, releasing these people was the right thing to do.
It is, of course, said to be all about money, but I'll bet that our failure to provide treatment for the severely mentally ill has cost us more than we've saved.
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