Homeless woman living in Toronto airport for a month
Airport homeless, originally uploaded by TempletonElliott.
….and no, it wasn’t me!
Thanks to Charles for passing along this story!
A woman who police believe was homeless was asked to leave Toronto’s Pearson International Airport after living there for a month.
The unidentified woman who had been hauling around a pink suitcase in Terminal 1 since mid-April did not appear to have any mental issues. Since she “met the threshold for trespassing”, police gave her bus fare and she left without a struggle.
Trish Krale, a spokeswoman for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority told CTV News “It’s not unheard of to get reports of people sleeping in the airport for extended periods of time”.
“It’s a rare occurrence but it does happen from time to time,” she said.
And because the airport never closes, it’s not unusual for people to be seen walking around — or catching a quick nap — overnight.
The number of cases in which the homeless around the world are seeking shelter in airports seems to be on the rise. Last summer, the Daily Mail wrote an article about people living in the Heathrow Airport. There have also been publicized cases of people seeking refuge in the Palma and Mexico City airports. Paris Charles de Gaulle is well known for the number of homeless people wandering around at all hours including one man who famously lived there for 12 years and was the inspiration for the movie “Terminal” starring Tom Hanks. CDG’s relaxed policy on dealing with the homeless seems to have only helped it become a miserable airport for travellers.
So what do you think of this trend? Should sleeping in airports be limited to cheap or stranded travellers or the homeless if they behave themselves and don’t stink up the place? At what point should airport officials say “GET OUT!!!” to all of us?
Are you serious? If anything, they should kick us out, not the homeless. If you travel, not drift, you’ve got money. We can afford a place to sleep, they can’t. I was offended when you put the fault of the abcess that Charled de Gaule is with the homeless and implictly suggested repression while ignoring the probable social causes of their situation. Then again, you probably just provoked me into responding :).
She picked a great airport to live in! I had a 14 hour layover in Toronto last October and there was a HUGE section of the terminal near where Air Canada departs for China that was totally empty and unused. Hubby and I snuggled up and were able to get some decent shut-eye without any human interruptions (the blaring TVs on a constant loop were another story…). Best of all, there were spotless modern restrooms in that section that nobody else seemed to know about! Yessssss!!!
I agree wholeheartedly with J, sleeping on the streets is a very hard thing, vastly different to being a cheap-ass traveller.
“they should kick us out, not the homeless”, are you crazy?
I’m tired of all these crazy beggars, drug addicts, annoying, sickos , I’m a low paying worker, I don’t travel often, but when I do, I want it to be a safe and nice experience for my family.
Of course the authorities and the VIP in their lounges or the individualistic anarchists like you don’t give a damn for the “suffering masses” who’d like to travel without being harassed by security, or pickpockets, or stinking alcoholic parasites.
Sleeping in airports should be strictly controlled - for everybody. If you have a valid ticket for a flight departing within 24 hours - OK, if not you should be evicted by security staff.
Those who do sleep at the airport should have respect for those who wish to use the seating area correctly i.e. sitting. They should not expect to monopolise three or four seats for their own selfish wish to lie down (everybody else is tired too, believe it or not). I am fed up with arriving at airports at night to catch a connecting flight the next morning only to find most or all of the available seats taken by dossers. They either sleep on the seats or on the ground immediately in front of them making them unusable by others. Who do these people think they are? These are probably the ones who put their dirty shoes on the seats and then complain about the airport being dirty. If you need to spend a long time at an airport between flights, factor in the cost of a hotel room before you book and show some respect for others in a similar situation. Airline lounges are NOT dormitories and were not designed to be, contrary to what some people appear to think. Learn to wait in a civilised manner. If you can sleep in an airline seat then you can also sleep in an airport lounge seat without lying down.
I love to travel, but i dont travel as much as i like because i am from Portugal, and here most average jobs are low payed. So i have to spare money if you want to travel…Well, two times i slept in airports. Many years ago i and my cousin we were at Heatrow-London and we could not sleep because it was kinda crowded with sleeping people and the gentleman near us was always doing noises and humming in his sleep and he gave a very noisy f*rt which even woke up a guy, it was very weird but we were teen backpackers it was kinda freaky but fun. Later, some years ago when i went to Norway i arrived to the oslo airport in the afternoon /evening and i was going to the centre of Norway that day by train. But there was a problem with my bank card and i was not able to buy the train ticket .I had to spent the night in the airport, and had no problem in sleeping there, people that worked there were friendly. The morning after the problem was solved and everything was ok and i could buy the ticket and get the train. I think that people who came in late flights or go in early flights should be able to stay inside the airport, as far as they have a valid ticket.
Calling the Homeless people ” SKINKEY PARASITES ” is wrong my dear, you one day might find yourself in that situation…How dare you!!!!!
WOW! I have to ask myself…What would Jesus do?? How horrid our judgements are upon eachother! Everything that we go through in this lifetime is a lesson of some sort. After reading this, I felt ashamed to be a part of this society. Anyone of us could be in that same situation at anytime. Two commandments that God has given us to live by: “…and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and…thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Do you think that we passed this test?? Hmmmm…NO!