But it’s just that: a fantasy, born from ignorance.
These are mobile drug dens often inhabited by people with long criminal records who throw trash all over the area — not middle class people down on their luck.
It's complicated. You're right that many homeless people are just people down on their luck doing their best to get by. Many of them aren't causing anyone any problems. From what I understand, most of these homeless people get by doing things like couch surfing and aren't very visible.
In this particular corner of the city, most of the people living in these RVs are not in great shape. Most are drug addicts, or mentally ill, or both. There is a halo of crime that surrounds these encampments. In the past couple of years, I've seen:
* Multiple cars broken into.
* A drive-by shooting of one of the RVs right by my house.
* That same RV's owner almost certainly selling drugs from her RV for years.
* A woman, completely topless, staggering in the middle of the street screaming obscenities at no one.
* Many needles on the ground.
* People urinating on our garage.
* Someone taking a shit next to our garage.
* My neighbor's car was broken into and the urn containing his father's ashes was stolen. When he found the guy who broke into it at a nearby encampment and tried to get it back, he was attacked with a knife.
* Rumors of prostitution and hep-C outbreaks in one of the encampments.
* A large man beating the shit out of a woman in broad daylight.
* Multiple shootings in other RVs and nearby homeless shelters.
* One guy, clearly suffering from schizophrenia, who sits on the sidewalk and screams at no one for hours and hours.
* Someone climbed our fence and was shambling around our backyard until a neighbor showed up and scared them off.
* Package theft, obviously. Constantly.
* Many many screaming matches and other domestic disputes.
* Someone sitting on portable toilet seat in the middle of the street, taking a shit in the middle of the day.
* Piles of trash, human waste, buckets of piss, bags of shit, etc. Because when you don't have property, that also means you don't have trash pick-up or sewer services.
* Someone throwing rocks at someone's car and at people in their backyard.
* A woman walked up onto our porch and stole the lightbulb right out of our porch light. (I've heard they use incandescent bulbs to make some kind of drug paraphernalia?)
* One guy runs what he calls the "homeless recording studio". He has a venue-sized PA system in his RV that he cranks up to full concert volume and plays the radio. Then he plays his drum kit on top of that. With the doors open, at all hours of the day and night.
In fact, I literally just got back from walking out to see what a large police response was about after seeing several cop cars circling. I don't know the details, but an officer said someone in an RV was refusing to come out.
I have a lot of sympathy for people suffering misfortune and I think almost all of these people mostly need help and support. I don't want them to be punished. But I don't want to keep dealing with the kind of stuff they are doing either.
(You may be wondering why we don't call the cops about this. We do. If we're lucky, they come. When they do, it's hours later and too late to do anything about it.)