thumb|300px|Houses in a villa miseria in [[Rosario, Santa Fe]]
Villa miseria (; ), villa de emergencia or simply villa, is the informal term used in Argentina for shanty town slums.
Name
The term is a noun phrase made up of the Spanish words villa (village, small town) and miseria (misery, destitution). The concept was first articulated in an October 1933 article titled "La VILLA de la MISERIA dentro de la CIUDAD MARAVILLOSA" (the villa of misery in the marvellous city) by Carlos Sibellino, and picked up in the title of Bernardo Verbitsky's 1957 novel Villa Miseria también es América ("Villa Miseria is also [a part of] America").
Other terms used are asentamiento ("settlement") and villa de emergencia ("emergency village"), the latter being the original name. These names are not popular with residents;
The Government's statistics agency (INDEC) announced in 2016 that 8.8 million people, 32.2% of the population, were living in poverty. This was a dramatic leap in numbers from the 4.7% people living in poverty just three years before.
The TECHO organisation estimated that there were more than 1,000 informal settlements in Greater Buenos Aires in 2015, only 10% of which had access to running water and 5% to sewage infrastructure.
Granting deeds on a lease-to-own basis, the fund mostly provides for households in Argentina's lowest income bracket and, thus, has historically had a collection rate of less than five per cent. The fund, one of the most important, is largely underwritten by national fuel and other excise taxes.
Villa 31
300px|thumb|right|Villa 31 in Buenos Aires
Villa 31 is a large villa miseria in the Retiro, Buenos Aires area of Buenos Aires, near the local railway station.