Atlanta’s homeless are flocking to airport atrium

ATLANTA — The world’s busiest airport has increasingly become a refuge for Atlanta’s homeless, especially during cold weather.

The domestic terminal is sometimes filled with homeless people overnight and into the early morning, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

There have periodically been some homeless people at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a public terminal open 24 hours a day.

But after the closure of a large shelter downtown and a prolonged spate of frigid temperatures, this winter large numbers of homeless have been using the airport to escape the cold, the newspaper reported.

Over the past couple of months, many homeless have been taking the train to the Atlanta airport stop, settling down in the chairs or stretching out on the floor in the domestic terminal atrium, the Journal-Constitution reported.

Frequent traveler Patricia Martin-Dye arrived at the airport overnight for a recent early morning flight recently and saw homeless people around the atrium and in the domestic terminal.

“They were everywhere,” Martin-Dye said. “I’ve probably been in the airport more than 20 times in the last two years, and I can never remember it being the way it was last night. It was just really concerning to me.”

Officials were asking people to show boarding passes to prove they had a flight to catch. If not, they were told they were trespassing.

“As soon as they would get rid of some, here comes more,” MartinDye said.

Martin-Dye said she thinks the influx of homeless people at the airport “definitely creates a stigma.”

Travelers waiting for flights “don’t want people coming up to them or sitting next to them (who don’t) smell properly or dress properly, and asking them for money,” she said. She said it was “heartbreaking,” especially because the temperature dipped into the 30s that night and “they were not dressed adequately at all.”

“You don’t want people to see a negative, coming from all over the world, coming from different countries. Coming to America, and that’s what you see?” she said. “That’s not anything for us to be proud of.”