Airports - A Homeless Shelter

Some people can end up living at airports for long periods of time. Many individuals have managed to live in terminals for weeks, months and sometimes even years.

- Janet Bednarek

In January, local authorities arrested a 36-year-old man named Aditya Singh after he had spent three months living at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Since October 2020, he had been staying in the secure side of the airport, relying on the kindness of strangers to buy him food, sleeping in the terminals, and using the many bathroom facilities. It wasn’t until an airport employee asked to see his ID that the jig was up.

Singh, however, is far from the first to pull off an extended stay. After more than two decades of studying the history of airports, there are stories about individuals who have managed to take up residence in terminals for weeks, months, and sometimes even years. But not all of those who find themselves living in an airport do so of their own accord.

BLENDING IN

While many major airports exist as mini cities’, it’s plain to see how this idea germinates. These travel facilities, after all, provide places of worship, policing, hotels, fine dining, shopping, and mass transit.

But if airports are ‘cities’, they’re rather strange ones, in that those running them prefer that no-one actually takes up residence there.

Nonetheless, it is possible to live in airports because they do offer many of the basic amenities needed for survival: food, water, bathrooms, and shelter. And while airport operations do not necessarily run 24/7, their terminals often open very early in the morning and stay open until very late at night.

Many of the facilities are so large that those determined to stay – such as the man at O’Hare – can find ways to avoid detection for quite some time.