Lights in the Shadows

In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold. Skyrocketing housing prices and an astronomical cost-of-living in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that directly, or indirectly, impacts everyone in the community.

Modern-day superheroes provide a lifeline to Silicon Valley’s unhoused

Published: April 29th, 2025

In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold.

Skyrocketing housing prices and an astronomical cost of living in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that directly, or indirectly, impacts everyone in the community.

While homelessness is not a new issue, it continues to grow at an alarming rate across the county, reaching record numbers in 2024.

More than 771,000 Americans were living without permanent shelter in the United States in 2024, up 18% from 2023 and more than 30% from 2022, according to a recent Department of Housing and Urban Development report.

The department says multiple factors are contributing to these historically high numbers.

“Our worsening national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle and lower income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits,” it wrote in the report.

The problem is impossible to miss in California, where HUD found an estimated 187,000 people living on the streets in 2024, more than anywhere else in the country.

Even at the epicenter of technological innovation, amidst massive corporate profits and personal wealth, a solution remains elusive to help those who lack the most basic of human needs.

San Jose, which is California’s third largest city and home to Silicon Valley, had 6,340 people experiencing homelessness in 2023, the fourth largest number of unhoused citizens per capita in the country, according to a San Jose Spotlight report.

It is amidst this growing humanitarian crisis that two modern-day superheroes, Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist, have found their mission.

They work anonymously in costume to provide a lifeline to those who sleep without shelter on San Jose’s sidewalks, camp in tents along the Guadalupe River or retreat to the subterranean darkness of the city’s storm drain tunnel system.

The pair spends hours distributing water, food and other supplies to those in need, often at their own expense, believing it’s critical during a crisis to recognize one another’s humanity and to be of service.

o“When resources are good and I have the finances to get stuff, I'll do pretty much anything,” Batman of San Jose said. “I'll get people tents, I'll get people shelters, I'll get people medical supplies.”

The duo have witnessed how devastating it is for people to live on the streets, and they have watched as the social and economic issues that fuel the crisis have become more pervasive.

“More and more of us are becoming poor and unhoused every single day,” Crimson Fist said. “But those people aren't the problem. They're the ones experiencing the problem.”

Extended Interviews

The subjects in this playlist represent a spectrum of voices involved in the homelessness issue – those providing aid, experts on the issue, business owners in the community, a politician working to craft solutions and those who are currently unhoused.

These extended interviews allow them to express their complete thoughts on the topics they care most about and provide full transparency in our reporting process.

A rising tide of conditions

The causes of homelessness vary widely, according to experts, and include broadly-intersecting issues such as limited services for the mentally ill, low income, lack of affordable housing, domestic violence, racial inequality, and others.

Although these issues are present in broader society, they stand as contributing factors to homelessness and are experienced at far greater rates by the unhoused.

Although 6% of the population in the U.S. suffers from a serious mental health issue, the rate is three times higher in the unhoused. And while Schizophrenia affects only 1% of the general population, nearly 20% of those experiencing homelessness suffer from it, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

For many citizens, witnessing people with mental health issues on the street causes fear and results in detachment or hostility.

For Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist, the commonly-held belief that people suffering from mental health and related substance abuse issues are all dangerous is something that needs to be challenged.

“They're a victim just as much as anybody else in this, if not the most important victim here,” Batman of San Jose said. “The fact that policymakers refuse to acknowledge that and instead jump to the stereotypes, and perpetuate the stereotypes simply because of public pressure, is very, very shortsighted.”

For many, the path to becoming unhoused is poverty and lack of affordable housing options, an intersectional crisis that continues to deteriorate across the country.

“The typical American worker has seen little to no growth in his or her weekly wages over the past three decades,” according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “Too little income combined with the dwindling availability of low-cost housing leaves many people at risk for becoming homeless.”

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an estimated 11 million households now spend at least half of their income on housing, leaving them dangerously at risk of becoming homeless.

The life stories the unhoused tell reinforce how dire the consequences of financial uncertainty can be.

“I was a salon worker for a while. I used to make really good money. COVID hit and we weren't prepared,” Tina Cuevas, who lives in a tent along the Guadalupe River, said. “We did Airbnb and hotels and we just really tried and really struggled. When the money was gone, it was gone, you know?“

This problem is particularly acute in San Jose, which is reportedly home to approximately half the world’s tech industry billionaires and has such a high cost of living that Chapman University listed it as the fourth most unaffordable city in the English speaking world in its 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability report.

Experts say that the cost of housing is so high in the area that even the attempts to provide affordable housing using low-income tax credits are rendered unaffordable.

“The amount of rent is set at 80% area median income,” Tristia Bauman, Directing Attorney of Housing at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, said. “But in an area where area median income is incredibly high, our economic success renders even our affordable housing programs less effective than they could be.”

Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist know well from their interactions with the unhoused that one unlucky health crisis or loss of employment can lead to crisis.

“Most of us are living somewhere close to the poverty line at this point,” Crimson Fist said. “It's very easy to think that you can't become homeless, but the reality of it is that it's very, very possible. And it happens to people every single day.”

Slideshow

This slideshow provides an intimate look as Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist conduct outreach to the unhoused community on San Jose’s streets, along its river and in its storm drain tunnels.

Bryan Meltz photographed the duo as they got into costume in preparation for their work, as they handed out supplies and offered safety and support for those in need while the pair was documented for Lights in the Shadows.

Domestic Violence

A tragic and leading cause of homelessness for women and children is domestic and sexual abuse.

“Among homeless mothers with children, more than 80 percent previously experienced domestic violence,” the National Center for Children in Poverty reported in a 2009 study.

And as many as 57% of unhoused women reported that fleeing domestic violence was the immediate cause of their homelessness, according to a summary report published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services in 2016.

Many victims trying to escape abuse have nowhere to go and too often end up unhoused and seeking shelter on the streets, sometimes with their children.

Approximately 11% of the beds in emergency shelters, transitional housing and safe havens in 2022 were targeted to survivors of domestic violence and their families, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Sadly, being unhoused provides none of the security fleeing victims need, as domestic abuse on the streets is all too common and often goes unreported.

Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist have experienced this issue firsthand in their interactions with Gretchen, a 47-year-old woman who has been unhoused since 2013.

The pair helped Gretchen find food and a safe place to sleep in July 2024 after she was beaten for the third time by her boyfriend.

“I'm just scared that if he finds me, he's gonna hurt me even more,” Gretchen said. “ I'm just hoping that somewhere can help me.”

Although there are emergency shelters in the city set up specifically for women experiencing violence, Gretchen said she was unable to find an available place to stay when she needed it most.

aHer experience is not unique. Other women living on the street say the well meaning support provided by emergency programs can’t meet the demand.

nAccording to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, approximately 85% of its callers in 2022 had unmet housing requests, and emergency shelters were the top need of domestic violence survivors.

“I've been in a lot of situations, and they promise that, oh, if you're attacked or you're hurt as a woman, that they have safe havens for you,” Cuevas said. “But they actually just give you a phone number to call, and there's no room there.”

Map

This map includes locations related to Lights in the Shadows, including spots where 360 experiences were captured by Shaminder Dulai. Home locations of the film team across the country are also included.

Click on an icon at a map location to learn more about it, or use the index on the left to explore the items by topic.

Solutions and Criminalization

Homelessness is one of the largest and most visible social challenges of our time, impacting nearly every community in the country.

“You're not just harmed because you have to see visibly unhoused people and it causes you to feel some form of distress,” Bauman said. “You're harmed because our systems are wasting our money.”

Despite public and political pressure to solve it, the problem has not only persisted, it has gotten worse.

In response, officials seeking to win political points or defect accountability often try to move the problem out of view by demolishing homeless encampments.

Those providing aid to the unhoused see this as a form of criminalization that exacerbates the problem, punishes those in crisis and removes the safety that living in a group provides.

“When you sweep people out of encampments and you just send them out into the world, no one can find them. People can't get them the resources that they need,” Crimson Fist said. “Getting swept is a full reset. It takes you right back to square one.”

Still, policymakers continue to seek to displace those who have nowhere else to sleep but public spaces to appease the public.

On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case City of Grants Pass, Oregon vs. Johnson that communities could impose fines or jail residents who violate bans on public camping.

To many, the ruling appears to pave the way for the criminalization of homelessness, giving authorities broad power to tear down camps and jail those they wish.

While there have been encampment sweeps in San Jose, Mayor Matt Mahan said he believes they alone are not the answer.

“We have to have places for people to go,” he said. “Simply abating encampments and shuffling people around the city at great expense to taxpayers, and with great suffering for those already on our streets, is not particularly productive.”

Like many experts and officials, the mayor believes a more effective and lasting solution must address key causes and include affordable housing for those who are falling through the economic cracks.

Those types of solutions, however, are often met with resistance from tax payers and business owners, many who are frustrated by what they see on the streets and want it out of their neighborhoods.

“You can't focus on your business when you have homeless people either poking into your business, asking for things, stealing things, breaking windows, stealing your car,” San Jose business owner Marco Najarro said. “Sympathy? I've lost it. I have no more sympathy.”

Even when funding is allocated, enacted programs tend to make a small dent in a very large problem and take a long time to implement.

Experts say the cost of land, high interest rates and rising insurance rates are making it increasingly expensive to build and run low-income housing.

“We're taking five, six years to build an affordable housing development that might deliver 100 new units of deed restricted affordable housing,” the Mayor Mahan said.

He said the cost to build each unit could exceed $1 million.

Homeless populations in 2023

Source: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-cities-in-the-us-have-the-most-homelessness/

Compassionate Response

The complexity of the problem and the difficulty in finding impactful solutions has left some believing homelessness is an unavoidable consequence of our social and economic systems that can be managed, moved out of view, but not addressed in any substantial way.

Others, like Bauman, believe things can be accomplished if we shift our collective social values.

“We can decide that we care about human rights,” she said. “Stop treating housing as a commodity, but as something that we recognize to be foundational to the health of not just individuals, but to communities.”

Batman of San Jose agrees.

“If we consider life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be the utmost of importance in America, then housing should be a human right,” he said. “Putting people in housing is by far the cheapest way of solving homelessness.”

While that shift in our society’s values may eventually provide long-term support for solutions to the large-scale problem, the crisis on the street today is pressing, and people are suffering.

Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist have decided their answer to that is to take direct, compassionate action to help those in need.

“I'm seeing what's happening, and I'm seeing how it affects other human beings,” Batman of San Jose said. “It's really forced me to look at myself and say, ‘I'm not comfortable with what I'm seeing in myself and my community. How can I change that?’”

By embracing ways to be of service, the pair provide much more than the water or food they hand out and the safety they give in a moment of crisis.

By treating their unhoused neighbors with care and respect, they offer dignity and hope for those who remain in the margins of our society and way of life.

Although Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist are well-known in their community, especially among the unhoused whom they call friends, they have chosen to do their work without revealing their true identities, hoping their actions will be seen purely as benefit to the larger community, rather than themselves. And they know dressing in costume helps raise awareness about the issue.

“It's literally just clickbait advertising,” Batman of San Jose said.

They have been covered by the press and that has resulted in greater attention to their mission and donations.

Although their approach is unique, they hope they inspire others into action and believe everyone can be of help in their own way.

“I would just encourage anybody who is on the fence about it to just know, even if your impact is small, it's still an impact,” Batman of San Jose said. “You're chipping away at the massive wall that is a societal problem, societal injustice.”

The superheroes believe that individuals caring for one another is a significant way to shift the entire system towards greater good.

“The small things that we do to help each other, they add up in this world. Even if it's a simple little thing that seems insignificant, it's going to help somebody,” Crimson Fist said. “ And helping people makes a difference, no matter what.”

Behind the Scenes

A behind-the-scenes film documenting the making of Lights in the Shadows, which was produced by nine participants during the weeklong 2024 MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Lights in the Shadows follows Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist, two modern-day superheroes who provide outreach and hope to San Jose's unhoused community.

MediaStorm's Online Trianing

Updated with nine making-of modules from our latest film Lights in the Shadows, our MediaStorm Online Training provides essential tools and techniques proven to enhance your craft.

Led by our award-winning team of producers, editors, and cinematographers, these modules offer a behind-the-scenes look at MediaStorm's approach to making meaningful films.

Credits

MediaStorm

A film by

Brian Storm | MediaStorm

Director, Producer & Editor

Robert Browman | MediaStorm

Writer, Producer, Editor & Additional Cinematography

Producer

Cinematography

Cinematography

Cinematography

Still Photography

Picture Editor

Documentarian & Additional Cinematography

Tae Yoon Lee

Motion Graphics & Additional Cinematography

Shaminder Dulai

Producer, XR & Additional Cinematography

Special Thanks

Maggie Hinton

Kelly Barbieri

Batman’s Dad

Sameer Shah, Voyager Coffee

Rebel Sun

Law Foundation of Silicon Valley

This Project was made possible by MPB

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