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By Veronica Stewart

Illustration: Flor Capella/Present Agency

On August 27th, it was one year since the Public Defender's Office for Civil Matters No. 1 of the Dolores Judicial Department, in the province of Buenos Aires, ruled in favor of Agustina González, a transgender woman, in a writ of amparo (a legal remedy similar to habeas corpus). The court ordered that she be provided with "dignified housing with adequate living conditions, given the serious situation of vulnerability, exclusion, and discrimination she faced at the time." However, to this day, this right has not been guaranteed, and Agustina continues to live in precarious and undignified conditions.

Agustina is currently hospitalized and at risk of infection due to poor hygiene and bedsores. “I’d be happy if they just fixed up my house where I live,” she told Presentes. “Just a little plastering, an indoor bathroom. The roof leaks, and the dampness and all the other illnesses I have—mainly HIV—have made me even more disabled.”

A chain of violence and exclusion

Agustina lived in what Cecilia Coronel, a member of Mujeres y Diversidades Dolorenses (Women and Diversities of Dolores), described to Presentes as “a situation of significant marginalization. She has suffered gender-based violence and domestic abuse, and has had to live from house to house and engage in prostitution,” she added. She lives in a precarious dwelling, without an enclosed bathroom or heating. The legal process dragged on for several months, but when the judge issued the final ruling on March 10, the injunction stipulated that the Municipality of Dolores must immediately provide her with “dignified and safe housing in habitable conditions for a period of one year, as long as the conditions of marginalization and vulnerability persist.” It must also provide her with interdisciplinary healthcare, including both a psychologist and a social worker.

"They said that situations of violence cannot be verified."«

But after the ruling in Agustina's favor, the Municipality appealed. In May of this year, the Court of Appeals for Administrative Disputes in Mar del Plata upheld the ruling. By then, several months had passed, and Agustina's health, and therefore the urgency of her request, had changed. After a tooth infection, Agustina had to be transferred to San Juan de Dios Hospital in La Plata, and, given the context of Covid-19, the medical staff agreed to allow her to continue her treatment at home.

Therefore, the lack of decent living conditions became even more pressing. “When we pressed the issue again, now with the court ruling, the lawyer brought a proposal for a furnished place,” Coronel told Presentes. “First, they said that the situations of violence and abuse she suffered couldn't be verified. Second, that she changed her request; initially, she had asked for a housing plan, and now she was asking for a rental. We kept pressing, but the media in Dolores didn't cover the case,” she added. The Dolores Women and Diversity Collective took charge of finding a furnished apartment, but there has still been no response to the Ombudsman's request for the municipal government to provide it.

Housing emergency

According to the statement “ The Human Rights of the Trans and Travesti Population in Mandatory Isolation, ” published by CELS on June 19, the housing situation for this population is critical. Of the 180 family-run hotels in the City of Buenos Aires, many of which operate as housing, several “offer precarious living conditions: bathrooms without proper drainage, leaks in the rooms, and communal kitchens lacking hygiene and safety. Renting an apartment is much cheaper, but it becomes inaccessible due to the requirement of guarantees or because real estate agencies or landlords refuse to sign contracts with trans and travesti people,” the report continues.

As indicated in the academic article “ Making Vulnerability Visible: Trans Community Experiencing Homelessness, Accounts of Housing Trajectories, and Institutional Responses, ” published by FADU, UBA, in 2016, 33.1% of the sample studied reported living in hotel rooms. The article also points out that “generally, one in three trans people live in low-income households,” and that early expulsion from the family home, the need to enter the workforce early and, generally, to do so informally, and “the lack of support networks from family of origin,” are some possible causes of this problem.