International evidence has shown that it is possible to achieve remarkable progress in the field of the energy efficiency of the building stock, mainly in its operations related with heating, lightning and overall technologies, which can be complemented with radical changes in the building itself. This Review article presents the opportunities and challenges of regenerating Social Housing Complexes in Chile to establish a base line related to the state of those buildings in relation to their retrofit potential with sustainability criteria, based in international metrics adapted for this case. It is concluded that it is possible to recover critical areas in Latin-American cities through an intervention strategy based in the principles of eco-retrofit, which allow to mold and quantify the contribution to sustainable development of the integral rehabilitation process of this building typology, which currently shows an advanced state of decay and obsolescence