What part of LA are you in? I’ve lived on the west side for the last 13 years and tent camps have been an issue for at least the last 10. They started getting noticeably worse about 5 years ago in line with a rapid rise in the unsheltered population [1].
I was on the west side. Yea, there were a few tents on 3rd street in Venice, but I used to play golf at Penmar for like the least 8 years, and there were never tents there, and in the past couple years it became about 1.5 miles of tents along holes 1 and 3. It has just grown leaps and bounds.
[1] http://www.laalmanac.com/social/so14.php