Foreclosed properties from failed savings institutions would...

Foreclosed properties from failed savings institutions would become available to house the homeless in a half dozen cities under a plan by federal regulators. Karl Hoyle, a spokesman for Federal Home Loan Bank Board Chairman M. Danny Wall, said the agency, which regulates the nation’s 3,000 S&Ls;, is talking with six or seven cities in Texas and in the North and Midwest. He declined to identify them. Hoyle said the bank board would lend the properties--in some cases commercial buildings near soup kitchens--to municipal governments, which in turn would pay to administer them as temporary shelters. On another topic, Hoyle said the bank board forwarded to the Treasury Department the outline of a plan for a “reinsurance agency” that would serve as a mechanism for channeling funds to the ailing S&L; industry.