Not long ago, we posted a piece that covered why airports in the United States don’t operate 24/7. We did specify that these are the choices of airports in the U.S.; other countries have different set-ups and situations and do indeed remain open all night long.
However Brussels Airport (BRU), located in Zaventem, on the outskirts of Belgium’s capital, has just started closing at night. It’s not because of noise complaints or anything like that. It’s because the increasing homeless problem inside the airport has gotten the better of airport officials.
According to Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN), as of earlier this week, the airport will be closed between midnight and 3am for the next several weeks, due to the increasing homeless problem.
HLN reports there are roughly 75 homeless people who live at BRU, which, according to the airport is significantly more than had been in residence in previous years.
Most of the homeless live in the departures terminal and are said to look like typical passengers who are waiting to board their flights. They grab the single use toiletries travelers toss in the trash – usually shampoo and shower gel – and use them to keep themselves clean by using the facilities in the airport’s rest rooms. Passengers have also been known to give BRU’s “residents” clothes, food, suitcases, etc. So between that and the airport’s being climate controlled, it’s apparently a nice place to live, if you have nowhere else to go.
Unfortunately, as good as the homeless people look to those who don’t know any better, they’re still the source of theft and inappropriate behavior due to alcohol.
An employee at a BRU food store told HLN that he’s filed thousands of complaints with the police.
“I’ve been working here for eight years and it’s never been this bad,” he said. Beer is being stolen on a more consistent basis, the employee said, and the homeless peoples’ aggressive behavior is also increasing. Incidents have included harassing customers and calling them names, urinating in the shop’s aisles, and setting fire to trash cans.
Security has been beefed up and they are doing their best to curtail the airport’s homeless problem, but with 75+ people living at BRU at any given time, they’ve just not been able to keep up with the incidents. That’s why and how airport authorities have decided to close the airport entirely for 3 hours per night.
Airport officials have asked airport chaplains and aid workers to intervene by making the homeless aware of the closures and offering information about alternate shelter options.
“The police have already given us a message that we have to leave by the end of March, but many homeless people have not found another place to stay,” one homeless person, a dancer by trade, told HLN. He said he’s been waiting for housing for several months and has been living at the airport while he waits. Another homeless person, a woman, said she had previously been an economist in Poland. She then started her own business in the Netherlands, but it failed and she had nowhere else to go. Other homeless people have been living at BRU for years.
BRU spokeswoman Ihsane Chioua Lekhli was quoted as saying, “The airport is not a shelter for the homeless. We will also carry out a major cleaning during that period to prepare for the summer period, but that is not possible with people at the airport.”
As someone who worked in a psychiatry unit for well over a decade, and who sometimes had patients who had experienced homelessness, I hate to tell this to BRU. But being closed for 3 hours in the middle of the night probably isn’t going to stop their homeless problem. It just means it’ll stop their homeless problem for 3 hours in the middle of the night. But we’ll see what happens.
H/T: HLN
Feature Image: Brussels Airport
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3 comments
This is a sad situation no matter how you look at it. One way to prevent unauthorized living in the airport is to do what other airports do and that’s add security controls at the entrance to the airport. So that only passengers and those at the airport for a reason can enter. It’s inconvenient but it also adds a security layer. Remember this is the airport that had a terrorist attack a number of years ago in the departures hall.
Then again the government of Brussels and Belgium is pretty F’ed up so there’s that …
I think that one thing that is missing is that BRU airport must not allow anyone to enter the airport unless they have a valid ticket or airport badge. Doing those could take care of the homeless problem.
Years ago when I was a poor student, I slept at BRU and took a flight the next morning. Looks like this is no longer possible