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I have a lot of trouble accepting this. One of my more vivid memories of the late 80s and early 90s is the nightly news always having some girl buying ice cream

I have a lot of trouble accepting this. One of my more vivid memories of the late 80s and early 90s is the nightly news always having some girl buying ice cream caught in gang crossfire. It was always the ice cream truck. We were banned from wearing blue, red, or Raiders jerseys because supposedly kids were getting shot walking home from school. We had smog days pretty regularly where we weren't allowed to play outside because the air quality was so bad. I'm pretty sure in every real, quantifiable way, children are much safer on city streets today than they were 30 years ago. We're just also more afraid. It's not like skid row and homelessness didn't already exist back then, along with much worse drug and gang problems. I'm sorry your daughter had a naked man wander onto the school grounds, but my middle school was shot at during recess by drive bys three separate times in the three years I was there. Things have not gotten worse.

fnordpiglet 5y ago
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.

fnordpiglet 5y ago

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.