I'm not great with steering racks. I assume you could rebuild yours to fix the leak. A new or remanufactured one is probably easier.
As for (temporarily) removing the power steering, you'll want to loop the lines at the steering rack, even though you have a leak there.
Then you have to take care of the belts like you said. There are two belts. One for A/C and alternator, and one for water pump and power steering. You mentioned going without A/C. There is an alternator-only belt available. Greg Vogel at
G Spec Performance will be able to get you one, no problem. It is the OEM belt used on SE-Rs with no A/C.
The other belt will be slightly more tricky. You can find out what length you'll need to drive just the water pump and buy one... but you will have no adjustment on the belt since the power steering pump is the pivot pulley.
This is why Greg Vogel at
G Spec Performance sells an idler pulley to replace the power steering pump. You could do that.
Or, you can leave the pump in the equation, but who ever told you that you can't loop those lines is correct. It will cause the fluid to heat up way too much and should destroy the pump in short order. You can't run the pump dry either. That will also kill it.