Does this small city have the Bay Area’s worst homelessness problem?

At the southernmost edge of the Bay Area, Gilroy sits nestled between the tree-covered Santa Cruz Mountains and the rolling golden hills of the Diablo Range. The city of some 60,000 people is surrounded by fields and orchards, and on summer nights the smell of garlic hangs in the air — reminders of its deep agricultural roots and its world-famous festival.

But behind that agrarian beauty lies a sobering statistic: Gilroy has one of the largest homeless populations in the entire region.

While it trails cities many times its size, when measured proportionally, the direness of Gilroy’s homelessness plight becomes clear. It has more than 17 unhoused residents per thousand residents, according to a Mercury News analysis of available California Department of Finance and county data. That is mo