SAN JOSE — Through the night, a homeless man who had scaled a nine-story crane above a new downtown housing development hunkered down in the glass paneled basket and shouted to the police below: “I’m homeless. I haven’t been fed. I’m cold.”

It wasn’t only police who gathered near the base of the building across from City Hall for what would be a 14-hour waiting game as Sunday night stretched into Monday morning before 39-year-old Alam Skandar climbed down from his precarious perch after an officer promised him a burrito.

Neighbors assembled, including one who set up a chair to “bear witness” overnight, along with a pastor from a nearby church, and homeless people who stopped to commiserate about their daily struggle on the streets.

“I don’t blame him,” said Carmel Juarez, 44, who sleeps in a homeless encampment along the Guadalupe River. Looking up from the corner of Santa Clara and 6th streets to the man on the crane, she said, “Someone needs to do something. No one’s listening to us.”

The burrito from Cafe Rosalena finally got Skandar’s cooperation lateMonday morning after police had blocked off city streets during the busy morning traffic. Skandar, dressed in cargo shorts and red tennis shoes, ate the burrito amid the scaffolding and framing of the new apartment building meant to be “affordable” for those making between $42,000 and $67,000 a year. Then police whisked him off to county jail, where he was booked for trespassing. He underwent a psychological evaluation where authorities determined he wasn’t a threat to himself or others.

In a jailhouse interview Monday afternoon, Skandar said he climbed the crane to get attention for “a lot of things going on in my life that need looking into.”

But he had a difficult time articulating those things, afraid he might sound “crazy.” Skandar, who says he has occasionally worked in his cousin’s tire shop, said he had been living on the streets until January and since then has moved from one friend’s couch to another.

“I don’t have a home,” said Skandar, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, his wrists shackled at the waist, “but I’m not living on the curb like I used to.”

It might not have been his intention, but to those watching from below, Skandar’s crane basket became a political bully pulpit on the plight of the homeless.

“To some degree, him being up there represents what others are going through,” said Shawnn Cartwright, 45, a neighbor who heard Skandar’s cries Sunday night and camped out on the street to make sure he was well-treated and came down OK. “If you think about it, he’s symbolic of what’s wrong with San Jose.”

She listened to him as he apologized to police repeatedly, saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do this. I just want to be heard.”

Skandar climbed down from the crane just as a new census was released showing that 6,556 people are homeless in Santa Clara County — a 14 percent drop from last year, but still “a crisis,” officials say.

“It’s a battle every day,” said Juarez, who said she has been homeless for eight months.

The Rev. Dana Bainbridge from First Christian Church, which runs the “Recovery Cafe” that helps recovering drug addicts, including the homeless, said it was hard to watch the man on the crane.

“I don’t want him to get hurt,” she said. “I’m always touched by how people keep trying when their situation seems so grim. They keep trying, trying for a job when it won’t even pay enough to cover the rent. They try to get housing vouchers even when hardly anyone takes them.”

Hours later, behind the glass of the jail’s interview room, Skandar said he grew up in Sacramento and went to an alternative high school there, where most of his family lives. He said he hadn’t been in San Jose long when he saw the American flag waving at the top of the crane and decided to climb it.

“I wish someone could find me the answers I’m looking for,” he said. “Maybe I just need help.”

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at Twitter.com/juliasulek.