A former San Francisco mayor wants to put the city's homeless on a Navy ship
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Meet-the-guy-in-charge-of-tackling-San-8331836.php
A former San Francisco mayor is rocking the boat with a new proposed solution to the city's homeless crisis. Art Agnos, who led the city from 1988 to 1992, wants to create a temporary shelter aboard a retired Navy ship.
In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, Agnos suggested turning the USS Peleliu, a decommissioned assault ship that rests in a San Diego harbor, into a shelter capable of housing "most, if not all, of San Francisco's homeless living in tents on the streets."...
The USS Peleliu has sleeping quarters, kitchens, medical clinics, offices, and recreation facilities, and once carried 5,000 military personnel on the open seas, according to Agnos. He proposes docking the ship at the Port of San Francisco, just steps from the city's tourist-packed Ferry Building, where the homeless populations can board at night.
His idea might not be as crazy as it sounds. After a 1989 earthquake leveled the Marina district and caused about $5 million in damages, people left homeless by the disaster sought shelter in the Moscone Convention Center. When the venue needed to reopen for business, a Navy admiral offered the USS Peleliu as a temporary dwelling.
I doubt that docking it right next to the Ferry Building is going to fly, but the Port of SF stretches for miles along the city's eastern waterfront, and most of it is only a few blocks from a Muni Metro streetcar line. And there's always Treasure Island, which was once a Navy facility.
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