Torre David is an abandoned 45-story office tower in Caracas. It was turned into a improvised home of a community of more than 750 families, living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation that some have called a vertical slum. Though seen as a laboratory for the study of informal vertical communities, and also a call to arms to fellow architects to see in those a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in the service of a more equitable and sustainable future, the Venezuelan government has struck an agreement with Chinese investors to restore the complex of buildings to their original purposes. The relocation of the residents in to a new social housing project may repeat the same mistakes of slum eradication previously made, which have consistently perpetuated or exacerbated systemic poverty.