Buenos Aires homeless stuck on the streets during COVID-19 lockdown

The Argentine government has ordered people to stay at home until mid-April, but thousands have literally nowhere to go - for them 'home' is the street.

The homeless in Argentina are more concerned about getting food than about contracting COVID-19.

Maria lives near the Banco Santander building in front of one of Argentina's main tourist draws, the Casa Rosada presidential palace. With her two dogs and her books for company, she won't hear about going to a shelter to wait out the pandemic: 'I cannot abandon my animals.

The city authority says it has accelerated plans to transfer homeless people to temporary shelters in sports centers or hotels, which have been readied to ease pressure on normal municipal shelters during the pandemic.

Official figures showed 1,146 people were living on the streets in Buenos Aires in 2019.

However, according a count by social and political organizations, the number of homeless in the capital soared to more than 7,500 in the last few months of Argentina's crippling economic crisis.

A homeless man sleeps at the entrance of a high school in Buenos Aires.

Rodrigo, a homeless man, sits on a monument at a square where he used to live with his wife and daughters until a police raid as police agents check his ID in Buenos Aires.

A homeless man looks inside a fast food restaurant in Buenos Aires.

Some have decried police violence, saying they have at times been forcibly removed from spots they have lived on for years.

Ombudsman Alejandro Amor said that 700 people have already been taken off the streets, but that still leaves thousands more.

A homeless man carries a can of water to the place where he lives alongside other homeless friends in Buenos Aires.