In the 1970s significant poverty reached as far north as Fordham Road. Around this time, the Bronx experienced some of its worst times eversource?. The media attention brought the South Bronx into common parlance nationwide.The phrase "The Bronx is burning" uttered by Howard Cosell during a Yankees World Series game in 1977, 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 the old Yankee Stadium, an uncontrolled fire could clearly be seen burning in the ravaged South Bronx surrounding the park, leading to Cosell's surprised quip.

The early 1970s saw South Bronx property values continue to plummet to record lows. A progressively vicious cycle began where large numbers of high-density multifamily buildings (left vacant by the flight of the white working class to other boroughs) sat abandoned and unsalable 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 the indigent, drug addicts and the mentally ill, who further lowered the borough's quality of living. As the crisis deepened, in an attempt to help keep property owners from abandoning or defaulting on their property en masse, the city began paying them to house these individuals eligible for free subsidized housing from the city. Although many landlords remaining in the South Bronx were suffering as acutely as their tenants, the city's initial response to the crisis was to treat the remaining white South Bronx property owners as if they were collectively responsible for the situation; responding to calls by civic leaders to punish "slumlords" by lowering the per capita rate for subsidized housing even further, most small owners now found that they could only continue to rent at a loss.

With no hope of reimbursement from the city for maintenance costs and with little legal authority to extract overdue rents or force the eviction of problem tenants, property owners who had waited too long to try and sell their buildings found that almost all of the property in the South Bronx had already been redlined by the banks and insurance companies. Unable to sell their property at any price and facing default on back property taxes and mortgages, landlords began to burn their buildings for their insurance value. Often, the building would be surreptitiously sold off to a "finisher"—a real estate dealer experienced in extracting value from worthless property via insurance fraud—who would have the building stripped of wiring, plumbing, metal fixtures, and anything else of value, often by local residents who specialized in the task. The building would then be burnt and the property insurance claim collected by the finisher. Many finishers became extremely rich buying properties from struggling landlords and burning them; often the properties were still occupied by subsidized tenants or squatters at the time, who were given short or no warning before the building was burnt down and they were forced to move to another slum building, where the process would usually repeat itself. Many residents reported being burnt out of numerous apartment blocks one after the other.

Local South Bronx residents themselves also burned down vacant properties in their own neighborhoods. Much of this was done by those who had already worked stripping and burning buildings for pay. Once the property had burnt down, the ashes could be sifted for salable scrap metal. Many other fires were also caused by unsafe electrical wiring, indoor fires being used for heating, and general mischief by gang members and petty criminals. After the establishment of the (then) state-of-the-art Co-op City, many Bronx subsidized housing residents also burned down their buildings in an attempt to gain priority status and jump to the front of the 2-3 year long waiting list for units there. This practice was reportedly quietly encouraged (or at least not reported) by city social services and HUD employees in the South Bronx. Firefighters frequently showed up to tenement fires only to find all the residents already waiting calmly with their possessions on the curb.

The arson epidemic accelerated throughout the 1970s as crime intensified and all but the poorest residents continued to flee the area, causing even more chaos and more arson; by the time of Cosell's 1977 commentary, dozens of buildings were being burnt in the South Bronx every day, sometimes whole blocks at a time and usually far more than the fire department could keep up with, leaving the area perpetually blanketed in a pall of smoke. The local police precincts—already struggling and failing to contain the massive wave of drug and gang crime invading the Bronx—had long since stopped bothering to investigate the fires, as there were simply too many to keep track of. By the end, over 40% of the South Bronx's buildings had been burned or abandoned, giving it the appearance of a bombed-out and evacuated European city during the Blitz.[14] During this period, the NYPD's 41st Precinct Station House at 1086 Simpson Street became famously known as "Fort Apache, The Bronx" as it struggled to deal with the overwhelming surge of crime. By 1980, the 41st's station had been renamed "The Little House on the Prairie", as fully 2/3rds of the precinct's 94,000 residents had fled and left the station house as the only building on the block that had not been abandoned, burnt by arson, or both.


Huh. When you think about it.. #GRE is holding their own against #ARG, 0-0, when #KOR lost 1-4. Interesting.
.