By early December 2015, the winter season in San Jose, Calif. had already claimed its first victim.

Not far from the upscale neighborhoods of Silicon Valley tech millionaires, a homeless man sleeping under a freeway overpass froze to death—and he would likely not be the last.

“It is cold at night,” homeless advocate Robert Aguirre says gravely, “but it is not as cold as it is going to get.”

He knows from experience.

As a former resident of The Jungle, Silicon Valley’s once-infamous sprawling 68-acre shantytown on the banks of Coyote Creek, Aguirre spent 10 months enduring the elements.

Since the Jungle was cleared out by city officials in late 2014, Aguirre and his wife have been able to acquire housing. With the help of a voucher the couple can now afford to rent a townhouse on the salary Aguirre’s wife earns as a medical clerk, but many of the 300 homeless who lived there with them were not as lucky.

That’s why Aguirre has become a full-time advocate, and hopes his insights will influence lawmakers to act with a sense of urgency. What might end up as the wettest winter on record is already underway and most of the city’s 4,000 homeless have been left without options, often getting ousted each time they find or make shelter from the cold.

The city of San Jose, along with the county of Santa Clara, have made the crisis a priority, pushing forward solutions like the development of a “safe parking program,” allowing churches to house the homeless, and expanding the use of cold weather shelters during the winter months. Still, as Aguirre describes it, those still living outside feel that they are being criminalized for having no place to go.

“Anywhere homeless go—anywhere they go—they are trespassing,” he explains. “It’s a mere fact that they don’t own anything.”

Since leaving The Jungle, he has been raising awareness about the effect the city’s cleanup efforts have left on its homeless residents.

“You find a nice, warm, safe spot and then the government comes and says you have to get out of here, then you have to find another warm safe spot. If you don’t get out immediately, you could lose your blankets and things,” Aguirre explains. “So you go to another spot and you think you are nice and comfortable there. They predict rain in two days so you figure, I can shelter myself. You start building something and your survival instincts kick in, but just when you are done with that they come and tell you, you have to move again.”

“Some of these moves, people will lose their backpacks that will have their ID in it, social security card, medication, prescriptions, pictures of their loved ones—that’s all taken away from them.”

City officials argue that there are safety and environmental reasons behind the sweeps and highlight the proactive steps legislators in San Jose have taken to house the homeless, instituting data-driven programs that have proven to work in the past. Still, most solutions and initiatives will take years.

All of them, Aguirre says, except one:

“The advocates have been asking for a legalized campsite as a short-term solution to the problem,” he explains. “We have an impending weather condition that is more than likely going to result in loss of lives. We can’t offer a counter-solution—we don’t have one. So what is wrong with doing that?”

The model, which Aguirre has been pushing for since the December 4, 2014 closure of The Jungle, is influenced by similar strategies implemented in cities like Seattle and Portland that would give homeless people a place to set up camp and wait out the harsh winter. Additionally, the plan will provide access to vital needs like social services, functioning toilets, and waste removal.

A pilot plan has found support with the San Jose City Council, which has teamed up with Santa Clara County to call for proposals that will outline how the encampment could be implemented and run. Nonprofits have until February 16 to submit detailed plans that must include site location, how services will be delivered, and the time required to set it up.

What once seemed like a long shot—wrought with “Not In My Backyard”-laden attitudes and political push-back—is now shaping up to be a viable temporary and experimental solution that could be implemented in the short term for a small group of homeless residents.

Still, important unanswered questions remain: The Jungle provided safety and security for some, but was also a haven for violent crime, rampant drug use, and unsanitary conditions that threatened both the environment and public health.

“People don’t evaporate. You can’t put them on a shelf and wait five years to figure out what you are going to do with them.”

In addition, there’s also the issue of where such a campsite could be placed and how it would be funded. City and county officials have expressed concerns that the pilot program would tap into limited resources that have been set aside for solutions that have already been proven to help the homeless.

Overall though, advocates and critics agree: There’s a crisis in San Jose and Santa Clara County and something must be done—soon.

“People don’t evaporate,” Aguirre says vehemently. “You can’t put them on a shelf and wait five years to figure out what you are going to do with them. These are lives we are talking about and we have to do something to deal with that problem immediately.”

It was just days before the one-year anniversary of the closure of the Jungle when the city council voted to move forward to start exploring a sanctioned encampment.

According to Councilmember Don Rocha, who served on the Santa Clara Homeless Task Force and prominent ally for homeless residents, it took a lot of convincing. In fact, even Rocha wasn’t initially on board with the idea.

“When I first started on the task force—based on what I heard from county staff and city staff—I was extremely reluctant. The case was made that this isn’t a solution. This is temporary,” he explains. “Why pursue it?”

Solutions to combat homelessness in San Jose have been made a priority over the last decade but the city, and Santa Clara County as a whole, still has one of the highest rates of unsheltered residents in the country.

2015 marked the culmination of the county’s first 10-year plan to end homelessness but according to the most recent census of the homeless population conducted in January 2015, there were 6,556 homeless people in Santa Clara and more than 70 percent were living outdoors.

The number is alarmingly high—even though it showed a 15 percent reduction from the 2013 census. Most of that drop has been due to ambitious programs being used by organizations s like Destination: Home, a public-private partnership launched in 2008 with the aim to bring every Santa Clara resident indoors and off the streets once and for all.

Most of the focus has been on adopting the “Housing First” model that has been successfully used in the state of Utah to almost entirely end chronic homelessness. The strategy provides housing, along with supportive services, to the most needy even if they suffer from substance abuse issues or mental illness.

Officially referred to as “permanent supportive housing,” these programs are effective—and a boon for budget.

According to an analysis conducted by Economic Roundtable last year, homelessness costs the Santa Clara County around $520 million every year. However, providing the neediest people with permanent supportive housing saves roughly $42,000—per person.

The initiative has caught on around the country, with more cities and states adopting the proactive and successful solution. But for cities like San Jose, where affordable housing is already in short supply even for the general population, it’s not so simple. Building units or finding the space requires both time and money.

A county plan to house more than 2,500 chronically homeless people over the next five years emphasizes that thousands more units still need to be built or acquired.

Until then, affordable apartments are in short supply, making it difficult even for those who have already been awarded housing vouchers.

Homelessness costs the Santa Clara County around $520 million every year. However, providing the neediest people with permanent supportive housing saves roughly $42,000—per person.

“We have a unique storm of circumstances that other cities leveraging techniques to end homelessness simply don’t have to manage,” Destination: Home’s executive director Jennifer Loving explained back in November.

The county, home to the tech boom in Silicon Valley, is now one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. Section 8 vouchers often don’t come close in a rental market where an average one-bedroom apartment costs more than $2,300/month.

To afford a standard apartment without assistance, a person getting paid the $10.30 San Jose city minimum wage would need to work more than four jobs just to afford a two-bedroom.

Housing First approaches also aren’t as cost-effective when they are used for non-chronically homeless people who don’t require extensive social services, emergency room visits, or regularly wind up in jails.

The majority of homeless people in Santa Clara are part of this group, stumbling into homelessness after being unable to afford such high rental prices—people like Robert Aguirre.

Born in Texas, Aguirre came to California 40 years ago hoping to cash in on what was then a new promise for profit in technology. He worked as an intern at IBM and then as an engineer, before starting his own engineering consulting agency in the heart of what is now Silicon Valley.

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He purchased a house. He started a family. Then there was a shift in the industry—and it all began to fall apart.

“All the manufacturers started moving away. I started losing clients a little bit at a time and the competition became really stiff,” he explains. “I started having trouble paying my mortgage. I got behind and had to do a short sale. [It was during] that time, my wife decided that she wanted a divorce. So, I lost my family as well—and I was homeless.”

Aguirre continued working, taking odd jobs and freelancing to save money, and lived out of his leased car. The biggest struggle, however, he says, was attempting to shield his two children from the reality of his situation.

Every other weekend, right before he picked them up from his ex-wife, he would use the money saved during the week to rent a room at a hotel. Then he would remove their things from a storage unit he kept, and set them up inside.

The kids would spend the weekend enjoying the pool and playing with their toys—and then he would drop them back off with their mother, put everything back in storage, check out of the hotel, and then spent another two weeks living out of his car.

He eventually got back on his feet—and remarried—but he and his second wife were still living too close to the edge. Unfortunately, his transition out of homelessness would only be temporary.

After giving up a two-story townhouse due to his wife’s medical condition that made it difficult for her to climb stairs, the couple was unable to find a new place that accepted residents with low credit scores.

Unable to return to their previous home, which had already been rented to someone else, his wife’s doctor recommended they purchase a tent—with her health condition, living in the car just wasn’t a choice.

“My wife’s legs had started to swell. We were sleeping in the car and she had no way to elevate her feet,” Aguirre explains. “So, after her doctor said we should get a tent, we decided to go to the Jungle.”

His wife was afraid—Aguirre had friends who lived there and they knew about the violence, drug-use, and other dangerous aspects the area was notorious for. But he said it was there that they found a community, and a sense of stability.

“We had drawers with our clothes, a place we could shower every day, we had places where we could get something to eat,” Aguirre says. “We built a stove and a little kitchen area so we could wash dishes. We had a cooler that would keep food cold for six days at a time—we were able to live somewhat of a normal life.”

They lived there for 10 months before the city’s December 2014 final sweep shut down the camp.

After giving residents notice to move out, the city and water district spent roughly a

half-million dollars leveling structures and removing debris as the people who once called it home watched in horror.

“When the Jungle closed it was panic,” Aguirre recalls. “They were water-tight and weather-proof and they were warm and comfortable and they had all their belongings in there and they were able to lock it up and they could feel secure. They had all their friends around them and they knew who was there. They knew their neighbors and they knew to watch for each other. This was a vibrant community.”

According to Aguirre, sweeps were a regular occurrence and partly why the homeless say they are unable to prepare for inclement weather or even foster any sense of security.

But San Jose’s Homelessness Response Manager Ray Bramson says that the clean-ups are essential for public and environmental health. Last year, the city and water district conducted hundreds of sweeps and removed more than 1,150 tons of debris.

“We make every effort to store personal property and belongings—that is our primary focus,” Bramson explains, emphasizing that the city is careful not to create additional hardship for people living on the streets.

“The encampment clean-ups aren’t done at night when people are sleeping,” he adds. “We are going in an enforcing a trespassing ordinance, not going after people’s basic human rights.”

Aguirre says he understands the issues—but believes a legalized campsite could solve the potential problems by offering a communal space for the homeless congregate together, where cleanliness and safety rules are enforced, and where service providers could easily access them.

“So, what’s the difference between people living rag-tag wherever they can, getting scattered, and [the city] spending hundreds of thousands—even millions—moving them around with no result?” he asks. “Instead, build an encampment where they can start working on their problems, where they can form their own community—where they can get better.”

Bright pink and orange light streaks through the dark clouds above the tents clustered together just beyond the playground in McLaughin park, situated just a few miles east from San Jose’s city hall. Amidst a slight drizzle, a dozen or so people are out laughing and talking as they make preparations for another cold night.

What’s left from a shared dinner of chicken and tortillas still sits in a smoldering pan near the park’s grill.

Yolanda Guiterrez, has been cooking for the group. With spice-stained fingers, the 41-year-old pulls casually at her hoodie, revealing the fading tattoos on her hands.

She smiles often even as she recounts the daily hardships. They shows across her face, still swollen from recently being assaulted by another homeless person. .

“It is broken in four different spots,” she says explaining that her injuries complicated the symptoms she is still experiencing from the two partial strokes she suffered over the last two years. “It is not easy to go through all this stuff out here and not have anybody’s help. But I haven’t given up—not yet.”

Yolo, as her friends call her, knows Aguirre from The Jungle days and works with him to raise awareness about the issues. She has been homeless for eight years but says the day the city cleaned out the camp was one of the biggest blows.

“A lot of us did lose everything,” she says, solemnly looking out into the fading sunset. “I was sitting on the sidewalk crying my eyes out, thinking, what the hell am I going to do next?”

Since the closure of The Jungle, Guiterrez has been awarded a housing voucher—but has struggled to find a unit that will accept it. Until she does, she must endure the hardships of living as a middle-aged woman on the streets, fearful and frustrated, moving to a new spot every week or so when the officials conduct sweeps.

“It’s been very hard since The Jungle,” she says. “We are with the same group for a couple days and then we are broken up all over again and we have to get used to other people. I don’t want to go through that anymore. I can’t. I am tired. My heart is broken.”

As a woman, she says, it is even more difficult to live on the streets without a strong sense of community. With tears beginning to roll down her cheeks, she says that her boyfriend was recently arrested. As a result of his absence, she feels lonely and vulnerable.

Hygiene is another constant struggle.

“I am embarrassed about it, that we have to use the restroom out here. We are all looking around like we are tweaking on something but we are just trying to find a place to go,” she explains. “I wish I could be in a bubble bath sitting in the tub for hours, resting. But out here, we can’t. We have to take a sponge bath with the faucet from the drinking fountain. It’s embarrassing.”

Guiterrez says that the insecurity is making it difficult to resist the urge to fall back into using drugs, but she has been clean for four months. She explains that she is trying to stay on track for her kids who live with her parents in Mexico.

“It was the hardest thing out of all this this, to go through,” she says. “I stayed staring at my sons walking away past the security check point, not being able to go past that line to say goodbye.”

While she expresses regret over the decisions she made as a teenager, she hopes she will still have the chance to rebuild her life.

“I fucked up. I lost everything and this is where I am at,” she says, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. “But I don’t want to wind up six-feet under—dying alone. When I get sick I want someone to be there to take care of me. That’s everything that I think about, sometimes laying in bed all night thinking, ‘What the fuck am I doing? Why am I out here?’ There’s so much stupid shit that has happened because of the stupid choices that I made. But I am dealing with the consequences now. One day at a time, trying not to give up.”

That is why she has joined Aguirre to push the city towards allowing an officially sanctioned encampment. She thinks the solution will allow others like her to have a safe space and a community where they can begin to build a future—at least until they are given the chance to come inside for good.

“I was going to meetings for city council doing whatever we have to do,” Guiterrez says, explaining that the process has been slow going. “But I am happy, at least a little bit, that what I am able to do is helping it advance more.”

The day after San Jose City Council voted to begin accepting proposals, Aguirre was there to deliver the news.

“Now that I am hearing about the legalized campsite, I was like, ‘Yay!’” she exclaims. “We finally got something started. Hopefully it works out for us.”

For now, it looks like the homeless community’s advocacy efforts have paid off. City council members are, for the most part, supportive of exploring a sanctioned encampment as a temporary solution.

Still, there may be pushback.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has questioned the idea from the beginning, emphasizing that the project could detract from data-driven approaches proven to solve homelessness.

“We are committed to helping the thousands of homeless living in our creeks, parks, and streets through a ‘housing first’ approach that also embraces innovative ideas, like converting under-utilized motels and exploring micro-housing projects,” Liccardo says via an issued statement. “I believe we must focus our efforts on these types of approaches that can put a roof over a person’s head and I continue to have concerns over the significant challenges that would be posed by sanctioned encampments in our community.

“That’s everything that I think about, sometimes laying in bed all night thinking, what the fuck am I doing? Why am I out here?”

Ky Ly, the Director of Supportive Housing for Santa Clara County, also expressed concerns about investing resources into a temporary solution that will be implemented on such a small scale when other options have had proven success. The pilot program would provide space for less than 100 people and would only be a stepping stone into something more permanent.

“It is a real challenge,” he says. “We know what works, we know what we really need to do to impact the homelessness problem in the long term in a big way. But on the other hand, when you go out to those encampments and you see people in need, you are just confronted by the tremendous need.”

Despite the issues, supporters are hopeful that the incoming proposals will convince critics that a sanctioned encampment will help in the short term.

Councilmember Rocha agrees with critics on the remaining issues, but says that he changed his mind after hearing from his homeless constituents and witnessing the toll the sweeps has taken on its community members.

“I finally shifted gears and decided that during this winter and through next year , if we are not coming up with any short term alternatives, let’s at least explore this and see what it looks like,” Rocha explains. “There’s no good reason not to look at the model and see if we can make it work here.”

If he could be convinced, Rocha says, others can be as well.

In the meantime, Aguirre will continue taking the bus between city hall and the clusters of tents. He will continue to attend the meetings and dole out supplies when he has them. “We do what we can. We help out who we can and when we can as much as we can.”

He emphasizes that he is not acting alone, but says he will make himself available to help facilitate the encampment, should it come to pass:

“If I need to be there, I will be there. As a consultant or an adviser or something, then I will do that. If they need someone to sleep out there a few nights to get things going I can do that. “

Ultimately his message is clear: Aguirre is committed to seeing this through no matter what.

“I will do whatever it takes because we have to be successful,” he says vehemently. “We just can’t afford to fail.”