Casa Andrea: a community home for women and people of color in Buenos Aires
From homelessness and abandonment to community life. Casa Andrea opened in late 2024 and is home to eight cis and trans people.
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina.
A dream, an urgency, a desire. Casa Andrea is a transfeminist home managed by the organizations No Tan Distintes and Yo No Fui. It opened in 2024, one of the most difficult years for the LGBTI+ population in Argentina. It currently houses eight cis and trans women, three children, five cats, and one dog.
“We don't have a recipe for how to build a collective house. We are two collectives with their own logic, their own ways of working, their own conceptions of organization—very similar, very similar, but at the same time different,” says Alejandra Rodríguez, a member of Yo No Fui, a transfeminist and anti-prison organization. “We are all learning, getting to know each other in depth,” she adds.
The house has two floors and rooms for each of the women. There are also two emergency rooms and a meeting room. When the house opened, Sofía Castro Riglos, the only survivor of the triple lesbicide in Barracas, moved in. Both organizations were vital in supporting the women in the months following the Hotel California massacre.
A dream house
Every Monday, in one of the rooms of the enormous house, located on the border of the Balvanera and Recoleta neighborhoods, a meeting is held between the two organizations and the residents to foster a friendly coexistence.
The house was built a little over a century ago. Mabel lived there with her mother and father. For a time, she rented it out to students or people who came to study in the Federal Capital. Eventually, Mabel was left alone and unsure what to do with the space. She had been offered to convert it into a hostel, but the idea didn't appeal to her. In such a difficult situation, she decided to make the space available and, after researching the work of Yo No Fui and No Tan Distintes (NTD), offered it.
Strategies
Sitting in the living room, the girls joke around. They talk about household chores and have fun with one of the five kittens that live there. They have an organizational chart posted next to the stairs at the entrance to the home. They come from different backgrounds, but they are united by the desire to build their shared life.
“Pipi (Gaby) and I have known each other for over 20 years. We met on the street, we were together, in juvenile detention, in prison. We met the collective and were together in a poetry workshop inside the prison in 2008. We got out, and after a million conflicts and things that happened to us, we are living together in a collective community space that has nothing to do with what brought us together 20 years ago,” Eva says.
“Intensity is what's never lacking here,” say the women who live at Casa Andrea. Marlene is a trans woman from Salta who was released from prison in 2024 after 17 years in prison. There, she met the Yo no fui collective because she was attending a literature workshop. After her release, she continued working with the organization and is now part of Casa Andrea. “If I didn't have this opportunity, I'd have gone to the streets,” she tells Presentes. Paula, Belén, Eva, and Gabriela also live there. “It's a learning experience. Collective life is a 360-degree change in living, thinking, and feeling everything collectively,” they agree.
Marlene set up a traffic light system. Depending on how she feels, she turns red, yellow, or green. Her roommates already know how to approach her. She says it's working very well so far and ensures there are no friction. Living in a community requires strategies.
Paula was drawn to No Tan Distintes after her time at Frida, a community integration center. “I spent a long time on the streets, almost 15 years on the streets. At 41, I decided to leave the streets, get my act together, and have a new life. And I joined No Tan Distintes, which has always been a huge pillar for me.”
Paula highlights the work of organizations that don't have a stigmatizing perspective. “Even our families tell us we won't be able to change or get out of the situation we're in. They don't believe us. And in reality, it's a bit complicated for us because we're from prison, because we've been incarcerated, because we use drugs. Thanks to Yo no fui (I Wasn't) and No tan distintes (Not So Different), we have this opportunity to live with dignity, to have our own bathroom, our own bed, our own room. Our colleagues who have children have a room for their children, and that's incredibly important.”
The worst year
The first year of Javier Milei's administration was not easy for diverse groups or for women in extremely vulnerable situations. Stigmatization, hate speech, constant attacks from the national government itself, and a fierce economic adjustment directly affected them.
“For me, it was one of the worst experiences since I got out of prison 12 years ago. I was out of work after having gotten a government job, which for me was no small feat. I lost it overnight, and I even worked for free for two months with the hope of getting it back,” says Eva, who worked on a rights promotion program within the Secretariat for Children. She is a single mother raising her son.
Both "Yo No Fui" and "No Tan Distintes" are active participants in the Antifascist Assembly, which called for the large march held nationwide on February 1st. They also formed an alliance with the Argentine Association of Prostitute Women (AMMAR) and are part of Mostri, a group founded last March.
“For us, Mostri had that quality of thinking beyond the box: it could be your time in prison, it could be your drug use, whether you're disabled, trans, or brown. All of that convergence also brought us together,” says Ari from Yo No Fui. “Being a militant, supporting homeless people, and wanting to champion anti-punishment already puts you in a Mostri position,” Alejandra adds.
A crime against all
The atrocious triple lesbicide in Barracas, carried out by Juan Fernando Barrientos, left its mark on them. Through their organizations, the women actively participated in supporting Sofía and demanding justice.
“It hurt me a lot, especially because they were colleagues who were in shelters with me,” says Belén.
“In that case, there was a whole precariousness to life and an absent state,” Eva adds. “It's what we do in our daily lives. Recently, a fellow inmate died in the Ezeiza prison from smoke inhalation, from a fire that broke out in a punishment cell. How many people were set on fire on the streets? All that terrible thing that is very visible in the Barracas lesbian murder is part of our everyday life. And that's what keeps Sofi here and makes us part of her life. And of her network and her affection.”
In December 2024, a ruling by the 23rd Court of First Instance for Contentious, Administrative and Tax Matters ordered the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (GCBA) to guarantee Sofía Castro Riglos, the sole survivor of the triple lesbicide in Barracas , access to decent housing as a matter of urgency.
“This house is a response to the question of where feminists are, in a micropolitical sense,” says Alejandra. “We aren't on television programs saying I'm a feminist or wearing a green scarf or whatever. We're working at the level of life's micropolitics and generating subjective and structural transformations in our lives. We're here, just as we are at feminist marches or defending the public university. We're trying to create more livable lives.”
The missing dreams
-What dreams do you have for the life to come?
Marlene: My dream is to graduate from something. I've been putting it off for many reasons. But I think I started doing things I love since I got out of prison. I really like learning every day. The Yo No Fui organization teaches me new things every day, even down to my way of speaking. My dream is to be able to help other people in the future with whatever they need, just as they're helping me right now.
Gaby: – This is about growth and for new collective housing to continue operating, so that we have the tools with this house. And so that we have super tools to be able to continue supporting housing and to be able to continue supporting girls. The dream is always for girls to live with dignity.
Paula: I'm learning everything, everything for me. It's hard, but we're learning.
Eva: In addition to what the compas are saying, we're in the process of experiencing all of this. We're realizing a dream, which has already become a reality. Two years ago, they were evicting us and leaving us with everything on the street. And today, in this house, a lot of wishes are coming true. For me, this is a dream come true, and we'll see how that dream grows, how we transform, and how it multiplies. Belén: My dream is to have a hundred houses, thousands of houses. To multiply the houses.
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