Housing and city planning have larger affects than most people today notice. Just because people aren’t homeless, doesn’t mean that their living situations are suitable or even reasonable. Around the 1970’s there was a large destruction of the South Bronx minority community. Minority communities and ghettos were looked upon as “obstacles” by policy makers.

The overcrowding of these communities, combined with the fact that there was no one who stood up for their basic needs, lead to many negative health repercussions. One of the most obvious violations of rights for the people living in these communities was the lack of fire stations, despite the fact that the overcrowded areas had a higher chance of incident. The fact that while forty-five fire houses were recommended to be open, yet only four were re-established in predominantly white neighborhoods, highlights the idea that minority communities were discriminated against to the point where they were in danger.

These neighborhoods in general, being in such poor condition, prove to have other negative health affects as well. A “casual association” has been made “between mental illness and the process of social disintegration.” It wasn’t merely the fact that it was overcrowded, it was the fact that minorities were forced into these communities because of their social status. The social environment plays just as big of a part on health as the physical environment does. Stress, among other heavy reactions, can have a serious toll on people throughout their life times.

City planning, as we all know, is a difficult thing. Balancing between creating a city landscape people want to live in with maintaining a level of adequate housing is not easy. But as we see from the past overcrowding individuals into small, hardly kept communities can have massive affects on those people as a whole.