yes and no - I just witnessed this first-hand, and it's pretty shocking.
on the other hand, part is a problem of other states putting homeless on the bus for California, part is the direct result of rising housing costs (the down side of the 2008 bubble recovery), part is the result of 10 years of bad decisions and feeble or contradictory response, and part is the visibility you'll see in a metro area of 13 million where 55,000 parked largely downtown & other key areas will stick out greatly, but to be fair, it's quite as visible in flashy San Francisco where Asian tourists especially are regularly horrified by the ragged & drugged-out homeless.

At the same time, this article makes clear the current mayor is trying, rather hard. It's a problem that affects all of the US, but LA is often the canary in the coal mine for these things, though obviously granting the right to sleep on sidewalks isn't quite as aesthetic as building much much more low-cost housing. (There was just a round in north Berkeley about building more housing vs. leaving the open pleasant grassy areas owned by the BART system - pleasant environment won over the need for housing, even or especially from the aging hippies. NIMBY is a way of life.). It's also interesting & sad to read all the blame for liberals in the LA Times comments, as if sanctuary cities are the main cause of burgeoning homelessness.

BTW, a Southern boy who might pull some sway with the 2020 election coming up.

His speech on pulling down the confederate statues struck me as perhaps the most articulate speech I'd heard in 25 years.

Of course he'll be on the wrong side of the identity politics divide, but then again, Bernie didn't quite fit it either...