Mobilizing Care and Housing Access. Demanding Responses to the Local Government in Buenos Aires in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic made starkly visible the housing crisis in the City of Buenos Aires characterized by the increasing presence of precarious housing situations. The mandatory social isolation imposed nation-wide at the onset of the pandemic significantly delayed the spread of the virus. Yet, this policy revealed the exclusion of the most vulnerable populations- the unhoused and slum dwellers. The city government of Buenos Aires offered the unhoused and slum dwellers patch-aid policies that immediately triggered the reaction of a collective of unhoused advocacy groups and grassroots organizations (GOs). Long-term and new GOs, demanded from the local government, adequate housing and immediate sanitary assistance for those who were already living in precarious conditions. We selected two case studies that were at the forefront of the array of claims and critiques to the local government during the pandemic. Most of these claims were situated under the constitutional "right-to-housing" established in the Argentinean constitution. We argue that the GOs mobilized an "ethic of care" whereby they built networks of care and assistance rooted in the idea of a relational social ontology. At the same time, they did not intend to replace the State's withdrawal from being a welfare provider and guarantor of rights, but to call attention to the State's moral obligation to care.