Three homeless people have died of hypothermia and two more have died of unknown causes as the winter cold front sweeping Argentina sends temperatures in the capital plunging below zero.

All five were sleeping rough on some of Argentina’s busiest streets and affluent neighborhoods — Barrio Norte, Palermo, Once, Retiro. City authorities were alerted by concerned residents or friends of the deceased who couldn’t wake them up. 

“Beyond the fact that homeless people die on the street everywhere and all year round, it’s sad to just be waiting for this time of year knowing that at some point we’re going to get this type of news,” said Horacio Avila, general coordinator for Proyecto 7, an organization working with the city’s homeless population run by people who have also experienced homelessness. 

A 41-year-old died two blocks away from the Alto Palermo shopping mall in Palermo in late May with the city’s first cold snap. That brings the total number of street deaths to five since temperatures began to drop. The capital’s emergency services cite hypothermia as their probable cause of death. Some of those who died had no identifying documents.

“We’re talking about highly visible places, central areas with a lot of people passing by,” said Avila. “The city government is the only thing that doesn’t stop or reach those places. It’s sad that we expect this to happen.”

Human rights groups and social organizations are holding a frazadazo on Monday at 5 p.m., a gathering to donate blankets to raise awareness of homeless people’s needs during the winter months. Protesters are calling for an end to deaths on the streets, the declaration of an emergency for homeless people, and that their entry to the city’s Social Inclusion Centers be according to “spontaneous demand” since access is only determined by government teams deployed when someone calls the city’s 108 “social assistance” hotline.

“We maintain with action and conviction that the street is no place to live, much less to die, and that Social Inclusion Centers are an adequate public policy to face this issue but they have to improve to be truly effective,” read the communiqué signed by Proyecto 7, CELS, Barrios de Pie among other groups, unions and Unión por la Patria representatives. They said Buenos Aires City government should provide more rooms and make it easier for rough sleepers to access the centers.

“The cold wasn’t the cause of death, it was the city government’s apathy and its band-aid policies don’t solve the issue of homelessness,” said No Tan Distintes, a homelessness activism group for women and the LGBTQIA+ community, in a statement. “Today, the Social Inclusion Centers have no room and our comrades can’t go in, exposed to these low temperatures at night.”

Buenos Aires City Mayor Jorge Macri got in hot water in April after he announced an “Order and Cleaning Raid” in different parts of the city with “before” photos showing homeless people — the “after” images did not. 

The mayor’s press team provided the Herald with reports on the deceased when they were found, highlighting the Social Inclusion Centers and specialized teams that patrol the city streets when temperatures dip under five degrees Celsius. The report on the person who died on Sunday said they had stayed in several of those centers, “meaning they were assisted on at least five occasions [and] given the opportunity to get off the streets.”

“That doesn’t take away the fact that they died anyway,” said Ávila.

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