From the ends of the XIX century, the city of Rosario has a very important number of its inhabitants survuvungsurviving in conditions of poverty and homlessness,many of them in "precarious establishments" (to avoid using the term "shanty towns") with little or null infrastructure of basic services (sewers, potable water, etc). To date, the efforts of the government (provincial, municipal and national) have not obtained substantial improvements in the fight against poverty.

This situation, added to the years of recession and the national economic crisis of 2001, has caused an incipient increase of the criminal indices.

In Argentina, shanty towns are called "Villas Miseria" (Villa Misery). They take its name from the novel of Bernardine Verbitsky "Villa Misery is also America" (1957), where the terrible conditions of life of the immigrants are described.

Several governemts, either civil or military, have tried to eradicate those Villas with different success, that is to say, to demolish the houses and to move their inhabitants to wards some other and more "hidden" areas. Used as a euphemism, they are also called Villas Emergencia (Emergency Villas).

Formend by rural population who went to the big cities in search of work, the national program ARRAIGO estimated in 2004 that around 900,000 homes were located in villas misery all over Argentina.