Homeless go undercover at Heathrow

FIVE OR SIX HOMELESS PEOPLE have flocked to London's Heathrow airport, camouflaging themselves with tacky floral shirts and bum-bags to blend in with the stranded tourists in order to get a good warm night’s kip on one of the airport’s benches.

According to Time Magazine, the phenomenon has become so prominent that last month Heathrow was forced to hire a local homeless outreach organisation, called Broadway, to go on regular patrols in the airport to try to wheedle the Hawaiian shirt clad homeless into temporary accommodation.

Apparently the homeless (or “rough sleepers”, as we Brits supposedly call them), have come up with a whole host of clever ruses to avoid being chucked out by airport security. Some hide behind open newspapers, whilst others sleep under coats in departure lounges. The really resourceful even manage to pick up the odd duty free bag to blend in.

So taken was Time by the ingenious efforts of the British homeless, that they even speak of their embodiment of “the English tradition of the plucky Dickensian Dodger”. Yes, British homeless people are infinitely more charming than American ones. It must be their adorable soot stained faces and rickets.

The sad truth of the matter, however, is that many of Heathrow’s homeless are victims of drug abuse, mental illness or debilitating debt. Finding a warm place to sleep is only part of the problem for the destitute who are forced to scrounge for food in and around the airport or beg for money on the tube. To make matters worse, the outreach program, Broadway, says that it is proving almost impossible to persuade any of the homeless they do manage to actually track down to take up their offer of temporary shelter.

Heathrow, it should be noted, is not the only airport to face the issue of itinerants. The USA also happen to have a fair few homeless roughing it on their streets, and back in the 1990’s, O’Hare airport in Chicago also ran a similar outreach program for rough sleepers.

But Time is quick to point out that Heathrow is a handier option for down and outs as it claims the airport, as well as being Europe’s busiest, is also the one with the most flight delays, making it easier for homeless people to blend in. But not all of them are able to. 65-year-old Joseph told Time that he had “a luggage issue,” because the plastic bags he used to carry around all his worldly goods were “hardly Louis Vuitton". (that’s quaint British irony if anyone missed it).

Unlike passengers in transit, the homeless spend their whole lives transiting, and for those lucky enough to find a warm corner in Heathrow airport, they are not likely to move out unless either health circumstances or the police force them to do so.

Time fails to reveal how much its in-depth research cost and why the money could not have been donated to a homeless charity instead. µ

L’Inq
Time Magazine