Bridge Over Troubled Water

There were homeless people in that area and in the nearby Lower East Side just as there are today. At that time, there were "mental hospitals" where tens of thousands of people were put/housed who suffered with mental illness and drug addiction etc. During the Reagan administration, these hospitals were closed and the people were put on the streets. So back at that time, many of the people we came across who were homeless were teenagers or people in their early 20s who had become "runaways" - running away from horrible parental situations.