South Bronx, divided several neighborhoods and displaced thousands of residents and businesses. The already poor and working-class neighborhoods were further disadvantaged by the decreasing property value and increasing vacancy rates. Racial tensions during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s further contributed to middle-class flight and the decline of many neighborhoods. By the late 1960s, the vacancy rate of homes in the South Bronx was the highest of any place in the city. The early 1970s saw South Bronx property values continue to plummet to record lows, as the city experienced a fiscal crisis. Primarily, White flight led to abandonment and deterioration of large numbers of buildings. This, coupled with a stagnant economy and an extremely high unemployment rate, attracted increased social problems including the proliferation of street gangs and a large number of squatters. This had a domino effect, leading landlords of nearby apartment buildings to neglect their properties as well. Police statistics show that as the crime wave moved north across the Bronx, the remaining white tenants in the South Bronx (mostly elderly Jews) were preferentially targeted for violent crime by the influx of young, minority criminals because they were seen as easy prey. This became so common that the slang terms "crib job" (meaning how elderly residents were as helpless as infants) and "push in" (home invasion) were coined specifically in reference to them. Moreover, South Bronx residents were reportedly burning down vacant properties, either for scrap or to get better housing, while some landlords were doing the same in order to collect the insurance money. Media attention brought the Bronx, especially its southern half, into common interest nationwide. The phrase "The Bronx is burning," attributed to 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 Yankee Stadium, an uncontrolled fire could clearly be seen burning in the ravaged South Bronx surrounding the park. By the time of Cosell's 1977 commentary, dozens of buildings were being burned in the South Bronx every day, sometimes whole blocks at a time. The local police precinctsalready struggling and failing to contain the Bronx's massive wave of drug and gang crimehad long since stopped bothering to investigate the fires, since there were too many to