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The [[Cross Bronx Expressway]], completed in 1963, was a part of [[Robert Moses]]'s [[Urban renewal#United States|urban renewal]] project for New York City, funded by the [[Housing Act of 1949]]. The expressway is now known to have been a significant factor in the extreme urban decay seen by the borough in the 1970s and 1980s. Cutting through the heart of the South Bronx, the highway displaced thousands of residents from their homes, as well as several local businesses. The neighborhood of [[East Tremont, Bronx|East Tremont]], in particular, was completely destroyed by the Expressway. Others have argued that the construction of such highways has not harmed communities.<ref name=Caro>{{Cite Power Broker|pages=893–894}}</ref><ref name=CrossBronx>{{cite web|url=http://www.nycroads.com/roads/cross-bronx/|title=Cross Bronx Expressway (I-95, I-295 and US 1)|website=Nycroads.com|access-date=November 19, 2017}}</ref>
The already poor and working-class neighborhoods were further disadvantaged by the decreasing property value, in combination with increasing vacancy rates. While some areas of the South Bronx were racially integrated as early as the 1930's, later larger scale influxes of African Americans immigrants from the American South, combined with the racially-charged tension of the Civil Rights Movement, the rage following the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the dramatic rise in crime rates, further contributed to white middle-class flight and the decline of many South Bronx neighborhoods. Following the implementation of desegregation busing policies, white parents who worried about their children attending the racially integrated schools began to relocate to the suburbs, which remained predominately white due to cost as well as legal barriers created by restrictive housing covenants, and selective lending. In turn, areas of the Bronx that became predominately African American or Hispanic were considered bad risks by lenders ("redlining"),contributing to the decline in real estate values and lack of investment in the existing housing stock.
As early as the late 1960s, some neighborhoods were considered undesirable by homeowners, precipitating a population decline. Postwar [[rent control]] policies have also been proposed by one author as a contributing factor; in this milieu, building owners had little motivation to keep up their properties.<ref name=CrossBronx/>
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