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.

[0] https://paneighborhoods.org/neighborhood-map/