It isn't meant to be taken literally. But to be literal, in my previous sentence, "We all have homeless problems in our cities" implicitly means "not just the people in San Francisco, California." I go on not to say "We all get accosted," but rather "We get accosted..." which due to the context of the previous sentence, simply exemplifies some of the people and situations that we (that is, people other than you or the author) come into contact with in the various cities we live in.

You said yourself you've been lucky enough to live and work in particularly nice parts of town. That sort of makes your dispute moot, and I still ask, "so does that mean the issue doesn't exist?"