Word: homelessness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Last month, Heathrow commissioned a local homeless outreach organization, Broadway, to visit the airport once a week and survey its homeless population, while also trying try to coax them into temporary accommodation. They were not prepared for the scale of the problem they discovered: In the first four weeks alone, they conducted 100 interviews with homeless "passengers" - although some of those were repeat interviews, the number was far higher than anyone had expected...
...When TIME joined the outreach worker and police officers this week, the homeless people contacted included a man sleeping under his coat, another conspicuously hiding behind an open newspaper, and a woman clutching a duty free bag who insisted she was waiting for a flight, only to whisper when police were out of earshot: "I can't afford electricity; it's warm here; please, let me stay...
...These men and women may seem to embody the English tradition of the plucky Dickensian Dodger, but it would be wrong to mistake their ingenuity for anything other than desperation, social workers say. Like those to whom the travel ads all around the airport appeal, Heathrow's homeless are also in search of escape: from debts, legal problems, family responsibilities. They often have mental health or substance abuse problems, and they often refuse help. During the day, some travel by public transport into London to beg, busk or take drugs, while others remain in the airport, sometimes scrounging food...
...When I came from Africa, I couldn't believe people could be homeless in Britain," says Broadway's Nigerian-born outreach worker Jeff Motunde. "But I discovered that homelessness is a way of life. It can be very difficult to convince people to receive help...
...Ingenuity is a necessity for Heathrow's homeless to avoid detection by police. "I thought about disguising myself as a passenger, but I have a bit of what you might call 'a luggage issue,' 65-year-old Joseph explains from a bench in the airport's remote bus terminal, pointing at a shopping trolley of bulging plastic bags. "They are hardly Louis Vuitton...