Just your basic feel-bad story

Jerome Kulek is Old North Beach. Kulek, described as a man of literary accomplishment -- he counts as friends Lawrence Ferlinghetti and city poet laureate Jack Hirschman -- has been hanging around the neighborhood since 1961.

Kulek, 72, also has a history of schizophrenia, a condition not unknown in this part of town. Long out of work, and now well past retirement age, Kulek has relied on Social Security and lived in a roomy studio at The Concorcia Apartments at 1204 Mason St. for eight years, where, despite his condition, he has been a steady tenant.

That is he did live there, until being evicted June 5 for non-payment of rent by the Chinatown Community Development Corp., which owns the building located within spitting distance of the Cable Car Museum. "It's a very nice building," said local homeless advocate Marc Bruno, who has taken a keen interest in Kulek's case. "On the outside at least, it's as nice as anything you'll find in the best parts of North Beach."

After being locked out, Kulek, unable to fend for himself or find shelter, got sick. He was found lying in the gutter by patrolman Mark Alvarez, who has known him for years. It was Alvarez who contacted Bruno, telling him, "He (Kulek) is on the street. He's gonna die here." Kulek did not die. Alvarez arranged for him to be taken to St. Francis Hospital where it was discovered that Kulek was very sick indeed, with pneumonia. The hospital staff got the pneumonia under control and Kulek is feeling better now, but he still has no place to go.

Or does he? The CCDC appears ready to relent and bring him back.

Alita Dwyer Carpenter, who manages CCDC's 17 different properties around town, said the nonprofit housing provider will consider taking Kulek back under certain conditions. Without making any promises, Carpenter said they are holding a "comparable unit" in another building for Kulek pending the resolution of his case. (His place at the Concorcia has already been rented, she said.)

For Kulek to be brought back inside the palace, Carpenter said, outside arrangements will have to be made providing him with in-house medical supervision. Further, the CCDC wants a social services agency designated as Kulek's payee, to manage his money and make sure the rent is paid on time.

In a city where landlord-from-hell stories abound, it's tempting to wrap the CCDC in a black cloak and paint a Snidely Whiplash mustache on Carpenter, the property manager. Maybe she deserves one. Bruno certainly thinks so. But this is also a case of a bureaucracy acting like a bureaucracy and either being human enough to feel bad about it in retrospect, or getting caught with its hand in the cookie jar and then doing some serious back-pedaling.

The exact circumstances surrounding Kulek's eviction are murky. Bruno admits that he's not entirely certain how much back rent Kulek owed, but blames that on the CCDC for withholding what should be simple bookkeeping figures. He did say that Kulek repaid $500 in mid-March, around the time he was served. Carpenter acknowledged receiving a money order "for something in the 500 dollar or up range," but said Kulek was still well in arrears, having not paid rent for "several months." (She did not provide a specific dollar figure or time frame.) What's more, she said, he had proven impossible to contact.

"We made numerous -- and I mean numerous, not just one or two -- attempts to contact Mr. Kulek," Carpenter said. "We left notices ... we even tried to reach him during off hours, but there was no response."

Bruno bristles at the claim.

"The moral justification for evicting him is that he never contacted them," Bruno said. "He handed a check to the building site manager in mid-March. If that's not contacting them, what is?"

Carpenter, however, maintains she did her due diligence and exhausted all reasonable means of trying to bring Kulek into the process, Failing, she went to the property management playbook and handed the matter over to the attorneys. The wheels of eviction started turning and didn't stop until Kulek was bounced into the street.

"Eviction is always regrettable, and always a last resort," Carpenter said, distancing the CCDC from other landlords who often look at eviction, especially the Ellis Act variety, as a full contact sport. "It's in our interest to keep tenants in our buildings, to keep the continuity."

One of the problems in this case, Carpenter said, is that Kulek lacked an advocate, someone who would have helped him head off trouble in the first place. She acknowledged that Kulek's psychological condition may have played a role in his mysterious disappearing act.

In Bruno, Kulek has found his advocate.

"This is not a tempest in a teapot," Bruno said. "This is a tempest in a tempest. There's something going on here."

Bruno said that because of Kulek's illness, he was an easy target for eviction.

"He's been in jail. He's been in asylums. How easy is it for them to intimidate somebody like him? He told me he was afraid to go to court," Bruno said. "No judge, based on what I know about this case, would have evicted the man under these circumstances."

Bruno and Carpenter also disagreed over the chronology and context of events. Bruno recounted a chance meeting on the street last week with Carpenter and CCDC executive director Gordon Chin, where they discussed Kulek's case. According to Bruno, Chin said he would welcome Kulek back, without being overly committal. Carpenter said the meeting took place in the CCDC offices on Grant Avenue, and Chin merely introduced the two before excusing himself to attend to other matters.

Bruno, like a lot of other advocates who work with San Francisco's poor, was generally complimentary of CCDC's efforts, but said the agency erred badly in deciding to pursue this eviction.

Kulek was not a troublesome tenant, Bruno said, adding a nonprofit agency that receives something like $18 million a year from the city to provide housing for at-risk, in-need tenants should not handle its affairs like a traditional landlord. Bruno does volunteer work for St. Vincent de Paul, another nonprofit that also provides low-cost rental housing. "Our policy is to give one year and two months notice when we evict," he said.

Because the CCDC owns and manages many types of SRO housing, from senior to Section 8 to tax-credit units, it will be interesting to see where Kulek lands if taken back. His unit at the Concorcia was no SRO; Carpenter described it as a full studio, containing its own kitchen and bathroom.

This is clearly a situation with no winners, only losers. The CCDC, a nonprofit that develops and manages affordable housing in the northeast corner of town, and, by most accounts is very good at what it does, gains nothing from this kind of public relations fiasco. The city itself has enough people on the street who need help. The biggest loser, Kulek, remains hospitalized. St. Francis has no intention of releasing him until they see a lease from the CCDC guaranteeing Kulek a place to shelter.

"Mark saved his life," Bruno said of patrolman Alvarez. He did, so now it's time for the CCDC to step up and save a little face.