Short term, in an emergency, a brake with the wrong cable and housing beats no brake at all, so if you were on the road and needed an emergency fix until you got to a bike shop it beats nothing, but that's about the only reason to do so.
brake inner wires are more than twice as strong as gear inner wires, and the coil-on-coil of spring wound is designed for the high compression loads of braking, and works fine even without the plastic cover. Index housings long spiral depends on the strength of the outer cover to support it under compression, and will buckle if the load is great as in a hard braking.
BTW- given that index housing is more than twice as much as brake housing, why would you even consider it?
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