I've spent over a decade now living in/visiting BsAs. and I think my main complaint is the barriers to entry that exist for renting or owning a home here, but this isn't CABA specific, it's all of Argentina, whether it's wanting you to have a deed to a home already (in which case, why would you be renting?) or mortgages having died out in the 2000s. Now, if you have money, this is a non-issue of course.
In terms of smells, I'd say the only ones that bug me are the guys that piss on the sides of the giant trash bins from the city. There's a constant ambient piss smell directly near them, but not elsewhere, and the city collects the trash every night. That being said, the cartoneros will often not put the trash back in so that makes a mess, but it usually doesn't smell, though they've thrown their lit cigarettes in a couple times and you can smell burning garbage once or twice a year, and last year one actually caught on fire and the fire department had to come and the bin melted.
The dog shit problem is honestly a lot better than the first time I visited here in the early 2010s.
Buenos Aires is gritty and "dirty" in the way that many big cities are, but it's also beautiful too. I was living up in Canada for a bit in Toronto and it's a ugly IMO compared to BsAs. Besides being architecturally, well, whatever the ROM pyramid is, like most North American cities it has a lot of unhoused people and people with untreated mental illness/drug addictions living in the streets and on public transit. I wouldn't want to live in Villa 31, but it's better than living under and overpass when it's 20 below outside.
It also depends on the neighborhood, if you live in Puerto Madero for example it has a higher HDI than many American States and Canadian Provinces, it's its own little world, like living in the Hamptons, far from us plebs.
