Mike Kanze wrote:

Now if you said open some unused Base housing units at a place like the
Presido or NAS Alameda and then I would agree with you. Those are real
houses....



"Were" is more operative.

Much of the Presidio housing has been razed and the rest is mostly being
used for its original purpose. At the former NAS Alameda, ALL of the
"outside the gate" Capehart housing has been flattened and the land is being
"redeveloped" with current stock, while that remaining on the former base
proper is being used for - housing. Similar with the housing on-board
Moffett Federal Airfield (ex-NAS Moffett Field), today a NASA facility.

There were any number of hare-brained schemes by former San Francisco Mayor
Willie Brown's Administration to house the homeless at the former NS
Treasure Island, but none of these got off the ground. All of these were as
poorly conceived as Mr. Weeks' suggestion and many were even worse.

Much of the housing stock on "BRACed" bases is very old or expensive to
maintain, or has contamination issues ranging from lead-based paints to
proximity with Superfund-grade contamination. This problem would be even
greater if people were housed on WWII construction ships due to asbestos,
lead, volatile organic compounds, etc., which brings us right back to one of
the main reasons that the Gummint plans to turn AMERICA into a crab condo.

Meanwhile, the voters in San Francisco approved a "care not cash" program
for addressing the very large homeless population. In the resulting absence
of generous cash payouts, San Francisco's homeless population has declined
significantly.



Hmmm, tore them down. Well they would been nicer quarters than the
America.