Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty.

The area has virtually no sewers and has a poorly maintained open canal system that serves as its sewage system, few formal businesses but many local commercial activities and enterprises, sporadic but largely unpaid for electricity, a few hospitals, and two government schools, Lycée Nationale de Cité Soleil, and École Nationale de Cité Soleil.

[3] Government control was reestablished after a series of operations in early 2007 by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)[4] with the participation of the local population.

The neighborhood is located at the western end of the runway of Toussaint Louverture International Airport and adjoins the grounds of the former Hasco Haitian American Sugar complex.

Neoliberal reforms beginning in the early 1970s made this place a magnet for squatters from around the countryside looking for work in the newly constructed factories.

This movement accelerated in the early 1980s with the destruction of the Creole pigs by American order in response to an African swine flu outbreak, followed by the rise of Finance Minister Leslie Delatour who took this post following the ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.

This industrial sector was however damaged following the 1991 coup d'état that deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, causing a boycott of Haitian products that closed the EPZ.

[10] During the mid-1990s, the city's population was terrorized by armed gangs which drove the local police out; this situation prevented officials aid workers from intervening to provide help.

[18] On 6 and 7 December 2024, Cité Soleil was the site of a massacre perpetrated by a gang controlling the area of Wharf Jeremie, leaving at least 184 people dead according to the U.N.[19][20] Elderly Haitian Vodou practitioners were reportedly the primary targets.

In October 2006, a group of heavily armed Haitian police were able to enter Cité Soleil for the first time in three years and were able to remain one hour as armored UN troops patrolled the area.

Since this is where the armed gangs take their kidnap victims, the Haitian police's ability to penetrate the area even for such a short time was seen as a sign of progress.

[22] Before Christmas 2006, the UN force announced that it would take a tougher stance against gang members in Port-au-Prince, but since then the atmosphere there has not improved; the armed roadblocks and barbed wire barricades have not been removed.

[31] As the biggest slum of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil fared relatively well, as most of its cinder block and corrugated steel shacks survived.