About 20 residents of a homeless encampment off Sixth Street can stay on the city-owned property on a month-to-month basis after the Gilroy City Council voted to extend a previous deadline to leave.
In February, a council majority voted to give the residents of the camp, known as “Camp Hope,” 90 days to clean up and move out before facing a potential eviction. But on May 4, after hearing from city staff, police, homeless advocates and members of the public, the council voted to allow the camp to continue operating past the 90-day mark on a month-to-month agreement.
The camp is located adjacent to the Sixth Street overpass at Highway 101, along the levee behind Costco.
Since the camp formed earlier this year, the city and partner organizations have provided services including outreach, sanitation, portable toilets and connections to social services in the area. Residents of Camp Hope had previously lived in tents and temporary shelters at various properties throughout Gilroy, from which they have been successively evicted.
The camp is technically in violation of an ordinance passed in 2023 that prohibits camping on public rights-of-way in Gilroy.
Residents of Camp Hope on Monday said the council’s reprieve offers some comfort, even though they know many people in the community don’t want them there and the city could still close the camp at the end of any coming month.
Jeremy Leach, who has lived without permanent shelter in Gilroy for about five years, said the camp and services offered there are better than “getting roused up, rolled up, taken to jail.” Leach moved to Gilroy from Texas, and has had difficulty finding permanent housing here due to ongoing personal financial challenges.
“It gives you a little comfort, knowing that you’re not just going to get broken down, told to leave, written tickets or taken to county,” Leach said. “It feels a little safer.”
Aubrey Tasby, who Leach described as the “camp leader,” said he and the residents are committed to keeping Camp Hope clean and quiet in order to minimize their impact on the surrounding community.
“There’s a lot of people out against us,” Tasby said. “We fought hard to keep this camp. We’re still fighting. And at any given day, they can come over and say, ‘End it.’ And then we won’t have anywhere to go.”
At the May 4 city council meeting, city staff noted that the official count of homeless residents is slowly declining in Gilroy. As of the 2025 Santa Clara County-sponsored “point in time” homeless census, about 959 unhoused people were counted in Gilroy—about an 8% decrease from the 2023 census. The decrease is attributed to more shelter capacity and services.
Jan Bernstein Chargin of PitStop Outreach—a local nonprofit that provides essential items and services for South County’s unhoused—said her organization has noticed a sharp decline in the overall need for homeless services in recent years, a “good trend.”
The city council also received a report from Santa Clara County on the 2020-2025 Community Plan to End Homelessness, which outlines five‑year strategies to reduce homelessness across the region, city staff said. The county shared Gilroy‑specific data, including the fact that in 2025, for every one Gilroy household that secured long-term housing, another 1.1 became homeless—highlighting the growing pressures facing local families.
Between 2020-25, 1,999 people affiliated with Gilroy were successfully housed through county‑supported programs, city staff added. In 2025 alone, these programs provided an estimated $21,984,420 in annual assistance to households connected to Gilroy.
