To be clear, this is one of two ships. The first was built and unsold. The second is being scrapped before completion. The shipbuilder declared bankruptcy in January of this year.

They used to say that whenever someone, somewhere, builds "the world's tallest building", this is a recession signal. Maybe the same can be said for ships.

Now this is a sunk cost!

SF should buy it to house the homeless. They could train/employ people to maintain the ship. Leave it permanently docked.

The local landowners fighting tooth and nail for low density housing would just argue that it is as much a blight on the local community as that laundrette was "historic".

That's a shi[p]load of razor blades .... (Old joke — ships used to be literally melted down to be made into razor blades.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1994/10/02/from...

Why don't they just park it somewhere (mothball it) until conditions improve and someone wants to finish it?

Because large vessels require a lot of expensive ongoing maintenance. You can’t mothball it without wearing that cost and the builder is bankrupt so can’t afford it.

In the SF Bay Area where I live the Navy used to have 50? ships parked. I never saw anyone maintain them. That's why I asked.

Good news. These ships are extremely toxic for the oceans.

(at a cost of $1.4 billion USD)