Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport has turned into a sprawling, “dystopian” encampment for the Windy City’s rising homeless population – sparking serious safety concerns among staff and passengers, who say they’ve been followed and harrassed.
Shocking photos show filthy makeshift shelters set up inside the major travel hub’s terminals. One photo even shows a vagrant collapsed and asleep inside a terminal vestibule.
“It’s out of control. None of us feel safe,” Vonkisha Chatman, a custodian who works the overnight shift in Terminal 1 and 2, told CBS News.
[Presumably this is taking place in the ticketing areas, as TSA restricts the gates and concourses to ticketed passengers who pass a security check. It’s still bad enough, and it becomes a security risk in itself. If a group wanted to stage an attack on an airport, infiltrating through homeless encampments would make it a lot easier to organize. This is part and parcel of the US’ refusal to deal with its mental-health issues rationally and provide some form of significant involuntary commitment for those refusing to seek shelter, and the lack of proper enforcement of vagrancy laws to disincentivize ‘encampments’. — Ed]
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