Surplus Military Bases May Be Used as Homeless Shelters

The Clinton Administration is drafting an executive order to allow surplus military bases and other excess federal property to be used as shelters for homeless people, officials said Tuesday.

Henry G. Cisneros, the new secretary of housing and urban development, said he is studying selected buildings on decommissioned bases near urban areas, including old barracks and officers’ quarters, as part of the Administration’s plan to convert defense facilities to civilian use.

In Southern California, advocates for the homeless welcomed the new federal initiative but cautioned that homeless people should not be isolated in rural areas away from job-training sites and other community services. They also noted that most military bases--including the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station and the Long Beach Naval Station--are not scheduled to be decommissioned for several more years.

Tustin Councilman Thomas R. Saltarelli, a member of a task force studying possible uses for the Tustin base once its operations move to Twentynine Palms in 1997, said turning it into a homeless shelter would not be economically feasible.

“Any time a military base is closed, there’s a possibility that a public use might wind up being an alternative and a homeless shelter is definitely one of those options,” he said. But, he said, that use wouldn’t even help the government recoup the cost of moving the base’s operations.

Cisneros, appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, said that “not all military bases . . . make sense. Many of them are out in the country.” But for some bases scheduled for closure near cities, individual buildings “could be converted into facilities for the homeless as well as low-income housing,” he said.

During the election campaign, Clinton repeatedly called for greater federal efforts to ease the problems of homelessness, including the use of abandoned military bases as the Pentagon scales back its budget and manpower needs.

Cisneros, a former mayor of San Antonio, said that “it’s critical, as we wind down the military machinery of the Cold War . . . that we make every effort to make that conversion (useful) to those most needy in our society.”

“I know the President believes this because he sent me a note on it,” he said.

HUD officials said they are working on a presidential order, to be issued in the coming weeks, that would set aside mainly surplus military facilities for the homeless. But it would also earmark other excess federal property, including unused federal office buildings, post offices or an occasional unused veterans hospital, they said.

“Out of more than 100 military facilities to be closed domestically, we believe 20 to 25 might be appropriate for the homeless,” one official said. “But we want to get local communities involved in the decision-making.”

In California, Richard Novak, an attorney with Public Counsel of Los Angeles, a public-interest adjunct of the bar association, said the effort is “a major step forward to reuse federal property, but this shouldn’t be seen as a way to get rid of homeless people.”

Harry Simon, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, which has pressed lawsuits on behalf of the homeless, said that “it’s time for federal leadership” and suggested that the Tustin Marine station might eventually fill a need.

“The homeless want, desire and need housing,” Simon said. “But without national leadership designs to solve the problem, we don’t think there’s going to be any solution. It’s refreshing to see someone taking the lead.”

Pentagon officials said the Tustin Marine station is not slated for closing until 1997. They noted that another large facility on the closure list is Long Beach Naval Station, but some community officials have proposed selling off parts of that property.

“The Defense Department has had a homeless assistance program for years,” one official said. “At many big-city armories that only are used once or twice a month, we open them up on other nights to the homeless and furnish them with blankets.”

Officials said they had no estimate on how many homeless people could be assisted by the use of surplus military or other excess federal property. Nor could they cite examples of other excess federal property in Southern California that might be used.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this story.