Tents once lined the sidewalks in Kakaako, the town in Honolulu, Hawaii that was once home to the largest homeless encampments in the United States. For years, homeless people took residence there, unable to snag a spot in one of Hawaii’s limited shelters. As housing costs continued to rise, so did the numbers—by September more than 300 men, women, and children called the encampment home.

Hawaii residents responded to the news on Reddit, describing what life was like in the encampment:

Now, all that remains, is the trash left behind and the city crews who are completing the final phase of a month-long sweep to clear the encampment. Much like when county officials in Santa Clara, Calif. cleared “The Jungle,” a large homeless encampment in the state near Silicon Valley, the sweep came under harsh criticism. The camp was cleared after a judge denied an official request from the ACLU to stop the city, citing concerns that its homeless inhabitants would lose their belongings and shelters. ACLU attorneys also filed a lawsuit challenging a city ordinance that grants authority to city officials, to confiscate and destroy anything crews identify as trash. A hearing has been scheduled for December. https://instagram.com/p/2w7G8ggL1c/ The move to clear Kakaako came as a precursor to a state-wide push to get a handle on its ballooning homeless numbers. Governor David Ige declared a state of emergency on Friday, and announced Hawaii would be allocating $1.3 million to increase its number of transitional housing shelters and permanent housing programs. He highlighted the encampment clean-up as a success, emphasizing that more than half of the camp’s inhabitants were placed in shelters. “We are making sure that we have options for those who are homeless to move into an emergency shelter, and the biggest deficit in the system is shelter space for families,” Ige said during a press conference. “So the emergency proclamation would allow us to stand up shelters for families in an expeditious manner.”

In just the past year, Hawaii saw its already high homeless numbers rise dramatically. According to data collected during the “Point in Time Count” conducted in January, there were 7,260 homeless people—the most per capita in the United States. The number of unsheltered residents rose by 23 percent between 2014 and 2015, and the number of homeless families by 46 percent.

The funds are slated to serve 1,000 people through the end of July 2016 and would expand both shelter spots and the state’s Housing First program—a programming solution to chronic homelessness that helped the state of Utah house almost all of its citizens.

The state is also planning to build a transitional shelter that would house up to 15 families and is considering the area that was once part of the Kakaako encampment and a potential building site.

Still, Hawaii is still a long way off from being able to offer shelter to everyone who needs it, and homeless advocates say, in the meantime, the state shouldn’t crack down on people who have nowhere else to go.

“Sweeps leave homeless people farther from getting back on their feet, especially when criminal citations or fines occur,” Erc Tars, a senior attorney for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty told Star Tribune: