Argentina made significant progress in recognizing the rights of homeless people (PSC).
In 2021, the Law on Street Situation and Homeless Families (No. 27,654) was passed;
the last National Census (CN), carried out by INDEC in 2022, for the first time incorporated an Annex on PSC.
Considering that the censuses take dwellings as units of analysis, those who do not have a home have historically been made invisible by the statistics.
To design adequate policies, we need statistics that allow us to understand the real magnitude of the street phenomenon.
Of the 46,044,703 inhabitants of our country, 2,962 would be living on the streets.
This figure provides more data about the INDEC's registration capacity, than about the number of people who actually suffer from a street situation.
A couple of examples in this sense: if the CN registered 91 PSC in the capital Córdoba, in 2022 the Ombudsman's Office detected 582 PSC;
In 2019, the Second Popular Census of PSC implemented by social organizations in the City of Buenos Aires surveyed 7,251 PSC, far exceeding the 1,734 computed by the government, and even more than the 903 consigned by the CN.
The Addendum for PSC had serious inconsistencies.
Five provinces were left out of the sample, which is why it is an excess to qualify the census as “national”.
In 9 provinces, only one department was registered.
Registering those who are permanently forced to hide or move from one place to another implies the need to adopt alternative counting methodologies to the conventional ones.
In turn, it is necessary to plan a registration strategy that involves the social organizations that know the location of the PSC in the different areas of the cities.
The NC was made in a hurry, without the participation of social organizations.
In addition, when referring to a registered city, it is omitted that the census takers did not go through all the streets, but limited themselves to certain areas where the presence of PSC was presumed to be significant.
The Census violates Law 27,654 by adopting a restricted definition of PSC that only recognizes the “homeless”.
Those who temporarily spend the night in a Parador were not counted as PSC, but under the category of collective housing (which includes barracks, homes for the elderly or children, prisons, etc.).
Some 273,833 people were included as residents of a collective dwelling;
the Census does not provide disaggregated information that makes it possible to unravel how many people occupy a place in a Parador for PSC.
Not presenting those who make use of said assistance spaces as PSC is no longer attributable to a methodological error, but to a political decision whose effect is underreporting that prevents determining the real magnitude of the street phenomenon.
A census that underreports the street population becomes a political tool that allows a "scientific" justification of state inaction.
After the Census, we run the risk that, when regulating Law 27,654, the budget items are set based on the 2,962 PSC detected.
Having reliable figures on the number of PSCs at the national level would have been a fundamental instrument to claim for the rights that are violated daily.
We let go of the possibility of obtaining a panoramic and federal vision of the street phenomenon.
Definitely, a poorly done census is a missed opportunity.