An Oakland City Council member’s plan to house up to 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship in the bay could actually set sail.
Because the International Maritime Organization is imposing more stringent emissions regulations in 2020, and some ships won’t be able to upgrade their engines to the new standards in time...Instead, they could dock them at the Port of Oakland or a private dock and plug into electricity...
— East Bay Times
Led by City Council president Rebecca Kaplan, the plan seeks to create affordable housing through a creative approach grounded in history. According to the East Bay Times, ships were used to house relief workers responding to Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas this past September; FEMA chartered cruise ships to house people in 2017 during the hurricanes in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in 2005 during Katrina.
Port officials have expressed doubt regarding the proposal, reports . the East Bay Times, but Kaplan still believes "the idea is worth at least exploring."
7 Comments
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Why don't we house 1000 TechBros at Alcatraz?
Retired trains, buses, ships, airplanes, campers, anything abandoned and decommissioned having interior spaces are potential housing with negligible added carbon footprint for construction.
The plan is most likely to pack the ship with homeless and then set it adrift. Kind of like that old NYC garbage barge that kept getting shuffled around.
Or more likely a floating prison. Keep ‘em off the streets.
Meanwhile the vacancy rate in SF is 3.5%, more than enough to house all the homeless.
This same point has come up in Denver recently, as at last count our rate is 5.2% which equates to "a whopping five empty housing units for every homeless person in Denver." However in my own conversations with industry folks and per some quoted experts that is basically the expected annual rate (around 6%) based on historical data and when accounting for monthly/regular turnover...Making the case perhaps inadvertently against the larger economic system?
Nothing inadvertent about it.
Out of sight out of mind. What could go wrong
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