My point was more that the rate of severely mentally ill living on the streets leads to a very different dynamic. In the 70’s and 80’s we had a functional public health system for the mentally ill. That was dismantled and the situation today is very different. The difference between a hobo and a paranoid schizophrenic is immense. Seedy areas are often simply where poor people live, and poor people have kids and families - they’re just poor, not dangerous. Folks with serious mental Illnesses are frankly considerably more scary for a kid than seeing drug dealers on the corner, and are by nature erratic and unpredictable.

The story of the disturbed man exposing himself wasn’t particularly about him exposing himself, but about the fact there’s no where for him to go to receive help, or if he’s untreatable, somewhere for him to live where his tendencies don’t hurt society at large. The only place for him today is untreated and on the streets - and that changed in the late 80’s and accelerated through the early 1990’s.