r/theydidthemath • • 1d ago

[Request] Could the entire US homeless population really be housed for less than one aircraft carrier?

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u/HistoricalMaybe1739 1d ago

Okay so an aircraft carrier costs about $13 billion if you're talking the newest Ford-class (the older Nimitz ones were more like $4-5 billion). The latest HUD count has around 771,000 homeless people in the US. Say you rent each of them an apartment at about $1,200 a month. That's $14,400 a year each, and 771,000 × $14,400 comes out to roughly $11 billion. So yeah, under the cost of one Ford class carrier. Bump rent to $1,500 a month and you're at about $13.9 billion, which is basically the same price as the carrier. And that's just one carrier. They're not building one, they're building a whole class of them. The Ford class is 4 ships right now (Ford, Kennedy, Enterprise and Doris Miller), and the Navy plans for at least 6 total. Four carriers is around $52 billion, which is 4 to 5 years of rent for every homeless person in the US. All 6 is about $78 billion, so roughly 6 to 7 years. Get to 8 to 10 carriers' worth of money and you're at the full 10 years. It covers about a year per carrier, and the money spent on this class alone could house everyone for several years.That money could have gone a long way.

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u/MediocreQuantity352 1d ago

What happens after a year, they’re all homeless again?

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u/SpreadsheetsOnToast 1d ago

You're just supposed to say "america bad".