Quarter of rough sleepers in City have been on streets for less than year

Juan finds it hard to talk or accept help. Lately, he doesn’t even want to eat. Ismael couldn’t bear to see himself that way anymore. He accepted assistance, went back to studying and is now looking for a job. Both are roughly the same age, in their 40s. Both have experienced what’s known as homelessness, a term that, in reality, covers a range of conditions.

In Commune 1 of Buenos Aires City, there are 1,483 such stories. That’s the number of adults sleeping rough across the six neighbourhoods (Retiro, San Nicolás, Puerto Madero, San Telmo, Montserrat and Constitución) surveyed by several organisations and NGOs working in the area. The figure is higher than the 1,236 people counted by City Hall across 15 communes at the end of 2024.

Despite official government data showing that extreme poverty dropped from 11.9 percent in the second half of 2023 to 8.2 percent in the same period of 2024, the NGOs (supported by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) Faculty of Social Sciences) found that 25 percent of respondents in their survey had been sleeping rough for less than a year.

Another 31.5 percent had been homeless for one to five years, 14.8 percent for five to 10 years, and 23 percent for more than a decade. Of those surveyed, 18.5 percent were women, 2.3 percent were trans women, 0.5 percent defined themselves as non-binary and 0.3 percent were trans men. The vast majority, 76.8 percent, were men.

Ismael, 44, lost his job in 2017 after working for 10 years at a pharmacy. Up until then, he’d never imagined he might end up on the streets, let alone the idea that, a year later, he’d be sleeping on the streets near the Teatro Colón

“I was laid off when the pharmacy changed owners – they let go anyone who’d been there more than five years. I used part of my severance to keep paying rent,” he told Perfil, in an interview. It’s almost midnight and Ismael is folding blankets to hand out later in the week. Today, he’s a volunteer with Amigos en el Camino, the NGO that helped him during those difficult times.

Back “in 2018, I kept looking for work but couldn’t find anything except the odd day job. Eventually I ran out of money and came back to find my things locked out of the room I’d been renting. I had no idea what to do: all my stuff was on the street. I didn’t know anyone and I’d never been through anything like that before,” he recalls.

From that point on, he says, “everything was a nightmare,” He kept looking for work, “but I didn’t look the same anymore. I was really dishevelled and I wasn’t even fully aware of what I was going through.”

One day he met a volunteer from the NGO. “At first I didn’t trust them, but then one of them asked me, ‘What are you doing here?’ That question hit me. I had this moment where I said, ‘No, this isn’t me.’ I couldn’t believe what I’d become. You start bonding with them and, eventually, you let them help you.”

Since then, he’s taken on internship placements and temporary jobs. He’s currently job-hunting and finishing a course in software testing and analysis, alongside training as a pharmacy assistant.

Between the last quarter of 2023 and the same period in 2024, unemployment in Argentina rose from 5.7 percent to 6.4 percent – peaking at 7.7 percent in early 2024. Unemployment among men aged 30 to 64 also rose as a proportion of the total, from 22.3 percent to 24.7 percent, according to the latest report from the INDEC national statistics bureau.

Life on the streets

Since founding Amigos en el Camino in 2011, Mónica De Russis has witnessed many forms of homelessness linked to economic crises and joblessness in Argentina.

“I think of Juan, who has difficulty speaking,” De Russis, the NGO’s executive director, told Perfil, when asked about the people they help.

Volunteers first met Juan during the pandemic and treated a foot wound which could have led to an amputation. But some things cannot be healed. “He’s severely depressed and letting himself die,” says De Russis. “We panic when he disappears and we can’t find him, because he’s so thin. Part of him is just waiting to die in the street.”

Still, in these harsh conditions, bonds can be formed. “It’s heartbreaking when all we can do is accompany someone through their final moments,” adds De Russis.

Last month, over one day, De Russis’s team and 250 volunteers carried out a street survey in Commune 1. They encountered all sorts of situations: some like Ismael’s, others like Juan’s. The resulting report is titled Contar la calle (“Counting the Street”) and its message is clear: the aim is “not just to count how many of us there are, but to say ‘we’re here – our lives matter.’”

The commitment doesn’t end with the survey. The arrival of the first cold nights in the capital marks the start of an intense season for the organisation. At their base on Valentín Gómez 3332, in Once, from 5pm to 9pm, the group accepts donations of blankets, warm clothes and especially men’s clothing. They also accept financial donations from those who wish to help.

The NGO is also running initiatives to knit woollen hats and make thermal blankets, sleeping bags and rain ponchos from recycled milk sachets. That project, called El otro frío (“The other cold”), includes inmates from local prisons working alongside other NGOs to help with production.