The Chanov housing projects on the outskirts of Most, north-west Bohemia, were built by the Czechoslovak Communist authorities in the late 1970s as a means of housing much of the Romany population that resided in the old royal city of Most. The city was demolished during the 1970s and 1980s to extract the brown coal deposits that lay underneath. The reconstruction of the city and the necessity to relocate the Romany population gave the Communist authorities an opportunity to attempt "to transform all inhabitants into productive and modern socialist citizens". The Communists believed that moving the Roma into modern housing would end behaviour that the Communists considered uncivilised, and resolve the "Gypsy problem".