Downtown banks redlined West Town for much of the mid-20th century. Real estate values plummeted as landlords neglected their buildings and speculators sat on vacant land and abandoned property. Small businesses along Chicago Avenues closed, and the arson rate in East Village was so high that in 1976 Mayor Richard J. Daley convened a task force to address the crisis. The Polish exodus out of the neighborhood followed the Kennedy Expressway into the suburbs. The Northwest Community Organization was founded in 1962 to stem white flight by promoting home ownership and integration between longtime Eastern European residents and the newcomers. The institutional infrastructure that held Ukrainian Village together during the 1970s and 1980s was lacking in East Village. Much of the Polish population had moved northwestward to Avondale and beyond, while the Latino community which had begun to organize around issues of affordable housing and other redevelopment strategies designed to stave off displacement increasingly came into conflict with the mostly white artists and other urban-pioneer types who by the early 1980s constituted a minor but significant presence.