Sometimes lawsuits are good — in this case in Orange County I think this is true.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-oc-homeless-20180317-story.html
This is the lawsuit filed
Or see it here:
Orange County Catholic Worker vs Orange County lawsuit
It should not take a lawsuit for the government to do the right thing, but, in many regions, on the issue of homelessness there has been so much foot dragging and kicking the can (or the tent) down the road so the homeless encampments just become a serial problem, rather than being removed altogether.
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty has put out a report on the issues of homelessness in cities, and how cities are responding to homelessness, here:
National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty Report
https://www.nlchp.org/Tent_City_USA_2017
The de facto, “illegal” homeless encampments that sprout up in cities are a problem — both for their residents, who are often housed in shoddy, squalid, garbage-strewn, vermin-filled, crime-filled, insecure, dangerous and essentially uninhabitable conditions, and for the neighborhoods in which these are located, which suffer the many serious problems and degradations of the neighborhood which results from the spread of these camps. HOwever, if we don’t want the camps, we have to provide other places for the people in them to find shelter. And this is where cities, counties, states and (most of all) the federal government are failing badly.
If there are homeless advocacy agencies suing cities and counties over not providing adequate shelter/housing for the homeless, cities and counties should, as I see it, also be suing state and federal governments for not helping enough with this problem, or for failing to address economic disparities which can result in people working full time yet being unable to afford housing.
The Santa Ana River camp in Orange County was finally cleared out of its approximately 700 inhabitants in February 2018. See this news story about the eviction.
Those clearing it found 1000 pounds of human waste and 5000 needles on the site, as mentioned in this article. This photo from the camp points to another problem that often occurs in conjunction with homeless camps — bike theft. 
In fact a huge cache of stolen bikes was found at the Santa Ana camp:
As described in this news article.
The Santa Ana Riverbed camp, set along a bike path in Anaheim, was so big that it prompted some bicyclists to take videos of the camp, which these YouTube videos show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Z3Rd0rD_I
Some of the homeless are interviewed in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFujzJrvNXA
And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWE06zf0_4s
Residents of the area near the camp filed a petition with 11,000 signatures, demanding removal of the growing encampment, describing it as a “Mad Max” scene, a post-apocalyptic nightmare, described homeless people stealing from them, casing their neighborhood, and feeling threatened by them and angry about the loss of a recreation area as it was transformed into an illegal squalid homeless camp.
See the story about the residents’ complaint here:
The county sent its inhabitants to hotels with vouchers to stay for 30 days. For many, there is no clarity what happens to them after 30 days.
And again, I believe that the first order of priority for any region, city or county or state government, as well as the federal government, should be coming up with plans first to move people from such camps into temporary shelter (of various kinds) and then into some type of either permanent housing or permanent shelter.
If there is not sufficient space in indoor shelters, then build more indoor shelters, and/or (as the attorney for the homeless argues in this article) set up sanctioned, secure outdoor shelters staffed with city staff to enforce rules and prevent all the problems we see at the squalid camps.
If there are not enough indoor spaces for the homeless, Levine suggests operating outdoor encampments with assigned guards to give residents “more freedom and air. That way, it’s an open and secure area where people could feel comfortable.” .
Lili Graham, director of litigation for the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, said she continues to worry for her homeless clients. She has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the People’s Homeless Task Force and seven river trail residents, alleging that the county’s sudden eviction of those residents is discriminatory because it denies them access to county benefits because of their disabilities.
The lawsuit maintains that Orange County has nearly $700 million in unspent funds available to end homelessness, including $146 million for housing vouchers, but officials show “a lack of willingness” to implement long-term solutions. “There is so much uncertainty for our clients,” Graham said. “What happens after eviction — and after the motels? There are no answers.”
In fact, this may be what Orange County does — there is talk now (see this article) about setting up large homeless camps in a few places in the County. This plan bothers many residents who say that it’s precisely because Orange County did not have these kinds of social problems (eg,, large numbers of homeless people) that they moved to Orange County instead of living in Los Angeles. Also, commenters make the valid point that many of these homeless people, cannot afford rents in the area, so what is then the long term plan going to be for them?
Residents of cities in Orange County do not want hundreds of homeless people shipped to their nice neighborhoods, as stated in this article.
“I don’t know. They need to put them somewhere, maybe somewhere else in California,” suggested Angela Liu, of Irvine, who owns a legal services company. “I really don’t know where they can go, but Irvine is beautiful and we don’t want to get destroyed.”
One interesting facet of this protest against homeless camps/shelters in Irvine, was that it was spearheaded by Asian groups. In this article, one protester said that to him it seemed like Chinese New Year:
Most protesters arrived in 24 buses chartered from Southern California travel agencies, the culmination of eight days of organizing in Irvine by residents.
“Did you see how we created a presence to keep our neighborhoods safe? Look at those crowds! It was like Chinese New Year,” said Kelvin Hsieh, manager of a high-tech company who signed up to ride the bus and marched with his daughter, fifth-grader Ava.
The Los ANgeles area has the bulk of California’s homeless…as stated in this article
California, indeed, has the highest total homeless population at 134,278, far more than second place New York.
A woman in Oakland, CA made a good point in her investigation of a large homeless camp in that city. When she went to interview people living at the camp in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKpkq081lsc
She pointed out that cities are not willing to spend money to provide basic shelter for homeless in their region, but are more than willing to spend money to take care of illegal immigrants. These badly misplaced priorities are surely part of the problem. But another part of the problem, which this video explores, is that it’s become impossible for low income individuals to afford housing in many parts of the US.
When homeless camps and “vagrants” are tolerated (often in cities like San Francisco with reputations for being “tolerant”) then the result can be seriously problematic when the vagrants become increasingly violent and dangerous, as shown in this video about the Haight neighborhood in San Francisco, which has in recent years been overrun by young vagrants:
The Homeless Quandary 
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