To be perfectly honest a lot of peoples perceptions about cities back then was highly rooted in race. It was a time when white people literally sold their homes and moved if a black person moved in on the street, or they even threw stones at black people they saw walking around who in their head they villified, or worse. Anytime someone has an anecdote where they have some adversion to the city, especially back then, I can't help but imagine a lot of that has to do with racial biases rather than lived experiences and actual perspective on how much crime is really happening.

I spent my first few years of life living in a city near a downtown. My friends were a mix of colors, nth-generation residents, immigrants, and refugees. Race had nothing to do with why my parents left. It had everything to do with the serial rapist attacking our neighbor and still on the loose, the markets down the street getting repeated drive-by shootings, etc.

I know the city has gotten a lot of bad press lately, but I'm pretty sure SF was more dangerous prior to the rich people moving in. It's just that more rich people started complaining after they came. My Uber driver's was always talking about how the high school near Dolores park used to be a gang hotspot or something.