In what appears to be an echo of a trend that was happening before the pandemic, likely spurred by increased hassling by police and outreach workers in the city, SFO has been seeing increased numbers of homeless people taking the train there and hanging out, or sleeping.

Back in July 2019 we reported on a nightly "caravan" of unhoused individuals who were seeking refuge at San Francisco International Airport, generally taking BART trains there and camping out where they could find a quiet spot.  Two years earlier, in 2017, the issue of homelessness at the airport also made headlines when a San Francisco police officer was stabbed, allegedly by a homeless person. At the time, the SFPD had a practice of "meeting the last train" into the airport's BART station at night, and offering inviduals rides back into the city.

Just before the pandemic began, in January 2020, Supervisor Aaron Peskin pointed the finger at SamTrans, San Mateo County's bus system, for "dumping" homeless individuals picked up at the airport at the Embarcadero's Sue Bierman Park, generally on the last bus that dropped off there at 2:30 am on weekends.

What's clear is that there has, for years, been a fair bit of transit back and forth to the airport for the unhoused. And a Chronicle piece today quotes a nonprofit outreach worker, Francisco Valencia with the organization LifeMoves, saying that the airport makes sense as a destination for many because "You can kind of blend in there. If you have your belongings with you, you kind of just look like a person that’s getting ready to take a flight."

One individual named Ben, who declined an offer of a shelter bed, told the paper that he was just looking to get out of the city for a bit and get some sleep. He said he was addicted to fentanyl and had been homeless in SF for four years, and he was ultimately headed back into the city.

Airport officials tell the Chronicle that they are now seeing 414 unhoused individuals at the airport per week, up from 222 per week around this time last year.

Eva Cheong, managing director of airport services at SFO, tells the Chronicle that officials are trying to balance "safety and security of our patrons and facilities with compassionate outreach to vulnerable individuals."

A likely reason for the uptick is the always futile game the city has been playing of shuffling people from places where they may have traditionally spent the night, in efforts to clean up the streets and disrupt drug activity under Mayor Daniel Lurie. The increased police activity in the Tenderloin, in Civic Center, and on Sixth Street has also led to an observed increase in drug activity in the Mission District.

"As people get pushed out of the city neighborhoods, we’ve seen them coming out [to the airport]," Cheong tells the Chronicle, noting that the BART stations at Millbrae and San Bruno have also been seeing an uptick in homeless people hanging out there.

Simultaneously, a crackdown on people dwelling in RVs and parking them long-term on SF's streets could lead to more people just driving those RVs across the border into San Mateo County... which would be a reverse of that 2019/2020 trend and could lead to some finger-pointing by San Mateo County officials.

Top image: Baggage carousels sit empty at San Francisco International Airport on April 24, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)