Larry the shoeshine guy falls on hard times again ON SAN FRANCISCO

Larry Moore is the homeless shoeshine guy who works at the corner of Montgomery and Market Street wearing a tie and blazer, but still sleeps under a bridge on June 2, 2009. Larry Moore is the homeless shoeshine guy who works at the corner of Montgomery and Market Street wearing a tie and blazer, but still sleeps under a bridge on June 2, 2009. Photo: Frederic Larson, The Chronicle Photo: Frederic Larson, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Larry the shoeshine guy falls on hard times again 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

When I stopped by the corner of New Montgomery and Market on Tuesday afternoon, Larry the shoeshine guy wasn't around. His friends say that's the deal. Sometimes he shows up, and sometimes he doesn't.

When I returned Thursday, his stand was on the corner but no Larry. After 20 minutes, he appeared, in a shirt and tie and talking a mile a minute. He was rolling up my pants cuffs and working on my shoes in seconds.

In 2009 and 2010, Larry Moore was a bit of a local sensation. I noticed him on the street, a dapper shoeshine guy.

He turned out to be quite a story, a homeless, recovered heroin addict, who pushed his cart up to Market every morning. He took me down to the freeway overpass near the Bay Bridge where he lived. He showed me the sheets of cardboard where he slept.

I wrote about Larry, and San Francisco, a city with a big heart, responded. Larry never asked for money, but it poured in. His shoe stand did big business, people handed him large bills, and a real estate company worked out a sweetheart deal for a nice apartment for $300 a month. (Truth be told, the landlord was getting bad press for terrible conditions in some of his buildings and was hoping he'd get some good publicity. But it worked out for Larry.)

Everybody loves a feel-good story, and we were all patting ourselves on the back at the way Larry's turned out.

But it is more complicated than that.

Larry is an example of why treating homelessness and poverty is so difficult. It isn't as if Larry wasn't trying. He was. He still is. But he didn't end up on the street by accident. As he admits, he's got issues. He's still battling addiction. He doesn't always make the best long-term decisions. His lack of follow-through is frustrating.

But that's who he is. He's a nice guy, with a great personality, who has battled those shortcomings his whole life. Giving him money may make us feel better, but it doesn't fix the problems.

For Larry, it started with his health. After the first columns, he had a back condition that required surgery. A doctor in a Tenderloin clinic stepped in to help.

Recovery was long and hard. Larry fell behind on his rent. I wrote about that, and money poured in, almost enough to pay for his apartment for four full years. An attorney who befriended Larry and took him to his house for the holidays tried to put the funds into an account.

Larry didn't want to do that.

Then he admits he overused his pain meds. He stayed home, hung out. His shoeshine stand vanished. He met a girl. She was bad news. Asked about the money, he says he made it last "almost nine months," but when I asked about the girl, he didn't duck it.

"She cost me almost all of it," he said. "And when it was gone, she was gone. I learned a real lesson there."

His support group is sick at heart. They saw this coming, of course, but Larry isn't a child.

Today the money is gone, and Larry is three months behind on his rent. There are new owners of his building, and although they are sympathetic, units next to Larry's are renting for $1,800 a month. He will probably be evicted.

The urge is to rush in and save him again. But I don't think that's the right call. He's at work now, back in a tie and charming passers-by with snappy patter. A one-time fix isn't the answer. There has to be buy-in from Larry.

He doesn't need another cash drive. He does, however, need your business. He needs to stay at his stand and earn a living. He can do it. We must have talked for half an hour Thursday. When I got up, it was impossible not to notice. He still does a hell of a shine.