My gut reaction is that (A) yes, it's an improper exploitation of public resources, and also (B) the severity of depends a bit on whether anyone else wants to use the space, varying between "hell no" versus "who cares".
With respect to (B), the article says:
> on the street in the East Meadow neighborhood of Palo Alto
Perhaps a Palo Alto native can chime in, but my remote map-searching suggests she's putting those RVs in areas [0] (18,20,21,28) where it seems reasonable for other people to complain, as opposed to some disued access road.
Fabian Way is an office/industrial area near the major 101 freeway with wide streets and plenty of room for the RVs. Seems entirely reasonable to park RVs there. The surrounding office buildings have acres of empty parking lots.
I can see if they stay a long time or are broken down and it becomes a shanty town that would be a problem, but given the problem of stupidly high rents pricing people out of homes, this seems a reasonable solution. City could lease an empty office building and allow cars/RVs in the parking lot with services like security, showers and social services in the office building.
With respect to (B), the article says:
> on the street in the East Meadow neighborhood of Palo Alto
Perhaps a Palo Alto native can chime in, but my remote map-searching suggests she's putting those RVs in areas [0] (18,20,21,28) where it seems reasonable for other people to complain, as opposed to some disued access road.
[0] https://paneighborhoods.org/neighborhood-map/