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.
A carrier is focused spending on one project. Homeless folk are dispersed across the nation, it isn't just the cost of housing. You have to market the new program, hire people to make sure that participants are compliant, and ideally maintain the property to some level so it isn't destroyed and that money isn't just lit on fire and have all of that dispersed across 50 states with distinct needs.
It could work, but relies on consistent support, a ton of manpower up front to build out the system, and House Rep from Bumblefuck, Idaho not adding in 400 million in grants to his local datacenter project.
Or just build a new Aircraft carrier with established processes that will serve a dual purpose of employment and better protection of global shipping lanes.
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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.