For much of New York City's early history, housing was provided in shared accommodations that would probably be described as SROs today. These units provided housing for single, low-income men, and to a lesser degree, single low-income women. In New York City, the number of SRO units increased a great deal during the Great Depression, but with the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people, SRO units became filled with tenants with mental health diagnoses, which led to bans on the building of new SRO units in the 1950s and taxation benefits for landlords to convert SROs into regular apartments.