Orlando International Airport’s fast-growing homeless problem
Authorities at Orlando International Airport are struggling to deal with rising numbers of homeless people arriving at the airport, seeking the air conditioning, restrooms and other amenities offered to passengers and patrons.
This year, 50 million passengers will board flights or land at Orlando International Airport, spending little time in the terminal. But others are making their airport their "home." They're people who live on the streets of Central Florida, and instead of seeking shelters, they try to blend in with travelers.
WESH 2 cameras were rolling the day after Hurricane Dorian moved through, when a dozen airport security workers and police officers, some with assault rifles, surrounded a man in the terminal.
The man appeared to be loitering and police issued him a trespass order, and escorted him from the airport.
It was a different story for a man last May. After he was questioned for nearly 30 minutes and declined to leave, he was taken away in handcuffs.
When an airport worker checked on one man earlier this year, he said he was waiting for a flight, but after she walked away, minutes later he walked out.
Senior Director of Airport Operations Tom Draper admits the public spaces are inviting, but said they are strictly for passengers and other patrons.
“The community does have a homeless population and I would be remiss to say that they don't visit the airport because we know that they do,” Draper said. “If they do not have business here, they need to move on,” he added.
Records obtained by WESH 2 Investigates from the airport and police show that last year 297 trespass warnings were issued. This year they're on track for 372, for a two-year total of 669.
And the airport says that's just a third of the total number of vagrants asked by police and airport workers each year to leave the property, without being trespassed at all.
Besides loitering, records indicate some are trespassed for harassing passengers and panhandling.
Often, the airport says the solution is the bus. The Greater Orlando Aviation Authority has been buying blocks of tickets to provide the homeless with free rides from the terminal. But they may just be heading to downtown soup kitchens to eat before returning to the airport.
“I don't know if it's the best way to handle it,” Draper said.
Most passengers agree, an airport is no home for the homeless, but many don't like the airport's method of bussing them off the property.
“It doesn't solve the problem. It just moves them from one place to another,” one man said.
“Instead of fixing the problem they're just pushing it somewhere else,” another passenger said.
The aviation authority tells WESH 2 Investigates that it is talking with homeless advocacy groups to come up with ways to discourage vagrants from making the airport a home, as well as ways to provide them the services they need.
WESH 2 Investigates spoke with the head of the homeless services network, which calls the homeless migration to airports a national problem and one they are aware of in Orlando and planning to tackle in the weeks and months ahead.