I can see where the confusion is coming from - The only reason template content is typically put in a script tag is because that prevents browser from accidentally generating that HTML in the DOM.
Including js/templates/hometemplate.js
will not generate an DOM element that you can select using jQuery.
Use AJAX instead to grab the content from js/templates/hometemplate.js:
$.ajax({
url : 'js/templates/hometemplate.js'
}).done(function(data) {
_.template(data,args);
});