<P> The already poor and working - class neighborhoods were further disadvantaged by the decreasing property value, in combination with increasing vacancy rates . Racially charged tension, during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, further contributed to middle - class flight and the decline of many South Bronx neighborhoods . As a result of new policies demanding that, for racial balance in schools, children be bused into other districts, parents who worried about their children attending the demographically adjusted schools often relocated to the suburbs, where this was not a concern . Some neighborhoods were considered undesirable by homeowners in the late 1960s and the area's population began decreasing . In addition, post World War II, rent control policies have been proposed by one author as contributing to the decline, by giving building owners little motivation to keep up their properties . New York City Mayor, John Lindsay (1966 - 1973), suggested that lack of education and high unemployment, limited the housing options for the remaining low income tenants and that this prompted the reduced upkeep by landlords . In either case, while desirable housing options were scarce, vacancies further increased . In the late 1960s, by the time the city decided to consolidate welfare households in the South Bronx, its vacancy rate was already the highest of any place in the city . </P> <P> In the 1970s significant poverty reached as far north as Fordham Road . Around this time, the Bronx experienced some of its worst instances of urban decay, with the loss of 300,000 residents and the destruction of entire city blocks' worth of buildings . The media attention brought the South Bronx into common parlance nationwide . </P> <P> The phrase "The Bronx is burning," attributed to Howard Cosell during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series featuring the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, refers to the arson epidemic caused by the total economic collapse of the South Bronx during the 1970s . During the game, as ABC switched to a generic helicopter shot of the exterior of Yankee Stadium, an uncontrolled fire could clearly be seen burning in the ravaged South Bronx surrounding the park, leading Cosell to intone, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning ." </P> <P> The early 1970s saw South Bronx property values continue to plummet to record lows . A progressively vicious cycle began where large numbers of tenements and multi-story, multi-family apartment buildings (left vacant by white flight) sat abandoned and unsaleable for long periods of time, which, coupled with a stagnant economy and an extremely high unemployment rate, produced a strong attraction for criminal elements such as street gangs, which were exploding in number and beginning to support themselves with large - scale drug dealing in the area . Abandoned property also attracted large numbers of squatters such as the indigent, drug addicts and the mentally ill, who further lowered the borough's quality of living . </P>

What part of the bronx was the fire