Yeah, this minimizing comment and ones like it are one of the reasons I left Seattle to live in Cape Town, a city with one of the highest percentage of homeless people in the world. Guess what? I feel safer in parks here.
Volunteer park is fine, and some of the parks up the hill are fine, but I've seen multiple children get pricked with used needless and I've been threatened by people in the park. I've been on the bus with my son with people openly smoking meth. I've been on the bus with my son where a man was punched in the throat for being Indian.
I don't know how you can live in that city and do anything without being exposed to this.