IRVINE

Hundreds of houses on the Tustin Marine Corps Air Facility, vacated by departing soldiers in July, sit useless while some of the city’s neediest families are ready to move in. But they’ve got quite a wait ahead of them, according to military officials.

It’s a bureaucratic delay that has one nonprofit group fuming. “We were given 14 homes,” said Margie Wakeham, the executive director of Families Forward, which offers temporary housing to the homeless.

Wakeham said that her nonprofit organization wants to use the homes, across from the city’s Civic Center Park, for a new career education program that would offer homeless families a way to earn a degree or work without worrying about how to pay the rent.

A Navy spokeswoman said that she did not expect the approval until next year.