Social workers seek out, try to help homeless at New York airports

NEW YORK — It's easy — particularly during the holidays — not to notice the homeless inside New York's two airports.

LaGuardia and Kennedy International are busy places. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, for example, the terminals at JFK alone were crowded with more than 600,000 travelers coming and going.

The number of homeless at both airports, on the other hand, averages roughly 200 during the day. They go in and out, washing up or people- watching. On a cold night, 15 to 20 might stay to sleep.

Those few souls, though, aren't lost on Michael Noel and Howard Cunningham. It's their job as social workers at JFK and LaGuardia to be on the lookout for the less fortunate — and help if they can.

The men — along with two other social workers — zigzag through the terminals, talking with security guards, searching for faces that might not necessarily belong. When they run across one, they don't threaten to call police or throw open the door. They offer a ride to a shelter or some information about substance abuse rehabilitation or psychological treatment.

"Instead of sleeping here, we give them options of changing their lives," Noel said.

But their first task, of course, is identifying the homeless, who often "assume the disguise of being travelers with regular luggage on wheels," Noel said. "We unmask their disguise. We know who's been sitting and not moving."

One day last week, a scruffy bearded man named Terrance came ambling out of the bathroom as the social workers walked by.

For the past few years, Terrance has made the airport one of his regular haunts.

"It's spacious, away from trouble, things like that," said the 35-year-old New York native, who asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy.

For Terrance, a night at the airport is preferable to most shelters. "Out here if you have something nice and you fall asleep, you still have it when you wake up," he said. "If you go somewhere else, you lose it."

Most of the homeless resist help. Like Terrance, they generally shrug off Noel and Cunningham and eventually leave on their own, heading back to the streets.

In a city with an estimated 37,000 homeless people, success for the airport social workers is incremental. This year, they've placed about 25 people in shelters or programs.