After his scandal-filled offseason, it feels like ages since  Johnny Manziel became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy.

But Manziel has a big hill to climb if he is going to be the first player since Archie Griffin in 1975 to win college football's top award for a second time.

Thanks to an autograph scandal and a half-game suspension, many voters may have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to Manziel and won't vote for him again.

If not Manziel, there are ten players that can dethrone the child-king. On the next few pages, we will take a closer look at the ten favorites.

Braxton Miller, Ohio State

Position: Quarterback

Finish in 2012 Heisman voting*: 5th (3 first-place votes)

Why he can win the 2013 Heisman: Heisman voters love a multi-threat player, and Miller has a good chance to throw for 3,000 yards and rush for 1,000 yards. If he leads the Big Ten in passing and rushing and Ohio State is a BCS-caliber team, Braxton will hoist the trophy.

The biggest obstacle he must overcome: The Big Ten is an inferior conference to the SEC. As a quarterback, Miller will need more than just big numbers. If Ohio State trips up and loses a couple of regular season games in the Big Ten, it will kill his chances.

* Final voting is only revealed for each player that received a first-place vote. In 2012, ten different players received a first-place vote.

Jadeveon Clowney, South Carolina

Position: Defensive end

Finish in 2012 Heisman voting: 6th (4 first-place votes)

Why he can win the 2013 Heisman: Outside of Johnny Manziel, Clowney is the most recognizable name in college football. He also has a ton of momentum built off of his big hit against Michigan during the Outback Bowl.

The biggest obstacle he must overcome: Clowney is the best defensive player in the game and could be the top pick in next year's draft. But he doesn't make enough highlight plays to woo Heisman Voters. He doesn't play offense, and as a defensive player, there will be games when he is either shut down or just won't have any highlight-worthy plays. There just won't be enough big hits.

A.J. McCarron, Alabama

Position: Quarterback

Finish in 2012 Heisman voting: Did not finish in the top ten

Why he can win the 2013 Heisman: The Heisman Trophy is a quarterback award unless there just happens to be no quarterbacks that deserve it and McCarron is the quarterback on the best team in the country. While McCarron rarely has big passing games, he never has bad passing games. In 2012 he threw 30 touchdowns with just three interceptions.

The biggest obstacle he must overcome: Despite being the quarterback on a team that has won back-to-back championships, McCarron doesn't seem to get much of the credit. Part of that is Alabama's defense. But a bigger part may be the large shadow cast by his coach, Nick Saban, who gets all of the credit. And that can be seen in last year's Heisman voting where ten different players received a first-place vote and McCarron wasn't one of them.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) announced the winners of its Chimpanzee Art Contest on Thursday.

Six sanctuaries across the U.S. submitted an original piece of art from one of their retired chimpanzees. All of these animals have a had a rough life, having once been used for medical research, forced into acting, or locked up in zoos and circuses. Painting is one activity that is used to cheer the chimps up once they are released into a safe haven.

The chimps seem to have an exceptional talent for this medium, each with their own aesthetic.

The first-place winner, a 37-year-old chimp named Brent, for example, used only his tongue to paint a purple, yellow, and blue masterpiece. There was also a second- and third-place winner. All six sanctuaries will get a $500 grant from the HSUS just for participating.

Some of the sanctuaries apparently told the chimps that they won, Nicole Ianni, a representative for the humane society, tells us.

The paintings will be auctioned on eBay later this year to benefit the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance.

Ripley, like many chimpanzees, was used as an actor before he was dumped in a roadside zoo. He eventually found his way to the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Fla. His caretakers are impressed with his resilience and forgiveness.

Ripley took home third place and a $2,500 grant for this piece of art.

Cheetah, who was probably born in the 1970s, lived alone in a laboratory for 19 years. He was rescued by Save the Chimps in Ft. Pierce, Fla. in 2002.

The tech titans have some fantastic toys: massive yachts, sleek cars, and over-the-top homes.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' home has a pool with an underwater sound system, Square CEO Jack Dorsey's place has a 20-foot retractable glass roof, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has his own Hawaiian island.

We found the 31 most expensive homes in the U.S. owned by the kings and queens of tech.

#31 Steve Wozniak's original Apple abode

Estimated home value: $4.4 million

Title: Co-founder, Apple

The Apple co-founder's beautiful Los Gatos, Calif., home, originally constructed just for him in 1986, hit the market this spring for almost $4.5 million, according to the New York Daily News. It's a six-bed, six-bath mega mansion of 7,500 square feet with gorgeous views of the Los Gatos Mountains, stained glass accents, and an outdoor pool with a cascading waterfall.

Wozniak's home may be almost 30 years old, but it had a major facelift in 2006, updating a lot of features but keeping the original contemporary designs.

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we looked at recent sales and public assessors' records, and we spoke to expert realtors and appraisers in these homes' markets.

#30 Marissa Mayer's Palo Alto place

Estimated home value: $5.3 million

Title: CEO, Yahoo

Another tech giant in Palo Alto, Marissa Mayer lives in a surprisingly modest home for someone of her stature. Her home, which was built in 2006, is worth about $5.3 million, according to the Santa Clara County assessor's office. Mayer also has a $5 million penthouse on the 38th floor of the Four Seasons in San Francisco.

It has five bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, an outdoor patio, and large backyard. While her home may be comparatively smaller to some of her industry's peers, it makes a great setting for hosting events. In 2010, Mayer held a $30,000-a-plate fundraising dinner at her home for Obama's campaign.

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we looked at recent sales and public assessors' records, and we spoke to expert realtors and appraisers in these homes' markets.

#29 Chris Hughes' renovated New York factory

Estimated home value: $7 million

Title: Co-founder, Facebook; Editor-in-chief, The New Republic

One of the co-founders of Facebook and currently the Editor-in-chief of politics magazine The New Republic, Chris Hughes bought his place at 30 Crosby Street with his partner in 2010 for $4.8 million, according to The Real Deal. It's a 4,164-square-foot, one-room loft divided by a row of wood columns with exposed brick walls and antique wood floors.

The 125-year-old building, which is known for having had some famous musician residents (Alicia Keys, Lenny Kravitz, Courtney Love) was formerly a corset factory, Nick Jabbour, Senior Vice President at Nest Seekers International, told us.

"Considering that Hughes likely reoutfitted and updated the space, his loft... is likely worth about $7 million today," Jabbour said. "SoHo remains one of the hippest neighborhoods in New York and is wrought with converted condos that meld old industrial accents with super-modern conveniences."

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we looked at recent sales and public assessors' records, and we spoke to expert realtors and appraisers in these homes' markets.

Even in a sluggish economy, there are a few American companies that are killing it.

Fortune released its annual list of the fastest-growing companies in America today, ranked by revenue and EPS growth rates, and total return over three years.

Some of the companies that are doing well are a reflection of the economy, beneficiaries of the oil and natural gas boom. Others are involved in the technologies of the future, like 3D printing and fiber optic lasers.

All of them are growing at an absolutely breakneck pace. 

The numbers provided are three-year averages. 

10. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

Revenue Growth: 65%

Profit Growth: 95%

Total Return: 43%

Everybody expected Green Mountain's business to implode after it lost exclusivity for K-Cups, the popular single cup brewery. Customers have proven surprisingly loyal.

Source: Fortune

9. HFF

Revenue Growth: 54%

Profit Growth: 113%

Total Return: 40%

The company describes itself as a “one stop shop intermediary for virtually any commercial real estate transaction,” and has seen its business boosted by the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy.

Source: Fortune 

8. IPG Photonics

Revenue growth: 46%

Profit growth: 153%

Total return: 59%

IPG Photonics develops optical fiber-based lasers used in a variety of fields, from manufacturing to medicine. Lasers are an increasingly efficient tool for companies looking to cut costs and modernize the way they make things. 

Source: Fortune

"This is going to be a party, may as well get to know each other," our petite instructor shouts out while us students all shake hands. The live DJ in the corner blasts Shakira from the speakers while we all start jumping up and down and waving our arms.

It's 11:45 in the morning on a Saturday, and I'm trying out ((305)) Fitness, the aerobics dance class inspired by the Miami club scene (thus 305, for the city's area code). The firecracker instructor is the 23-year-old Sadie Kurzban, the founder and inventor of the high-energy work out.

"I was never a dancer," Kurzban tells me after class at a nearby cafe. "The first time I took a cardio dance class in my hometown of Miami, it changed everything. Instead of being on the treadmill and counting calories, I was focusing on how my body was moving and the people around me."

That vibe inspired Kurzban to start a similar class at her alma mater, Brown University. Soon, hundreds of students of all different sizes, backgrounds, and endurance levels were coming to the club-inspired fitness class. "At Brown, it's very intellectual and no one works out. It's actually very uncool to work out," she laughs.

"But this was a community and it was so much fun. I was able to help people feel good about their bodies in this fun setting."

Inspired to start her own fitness business, Kurzban stopped taking classes on feminism and English and began to enroll in business and accounting courses. She even majored in Econ, much to her own surprise.

Then it was the moment of truth: Every year, Brown University has an Entrepreneurship Competition where the student with the best business plan can win funds to start his or her own venture.

"Fifty people enter this competition. 49 of them are guys with medical, science, and tech-based plans. And then I'm up there saying that I'm going to start this fitness thing in New York City," Kurzban tells me.

But after working long hours to make a unique and solid business proposal, she won the competition— and the prize money. Kurzban took her winnings, moved to New York City, and started doing one ((305)) Fitness class once a week in October 2012.

Not long after, it had exploded.

Today, Kurzban has seven other instructors and teaches around 15 classes a week at the Flatiron District dance studio where prices range from $18 for students to $24 for a single class.

And it's not hard to see why it's so popular. The ((305)) classes are high intensity, high energy, and highly motivating. There's a warm up with dance choreography, a toning section, dance sprints, and a cool down. Inspired by interval training, the dance moves work your arms, legs, and abs the entire time.

But it doesn't feel like interval training. Though ((305)) isn't easy by any means — Kurzban doesn't want students to plateau with her workout like they might with Zumba — it feels more like you're in a club than at an aerobics class. Girls in spandex shimmy, shake, and strut in front of the studio mirror as Kurzban spins around the room whooping it up. Neon lights and loud speakers don't hurt the ambiance, either.

Obviously, the class isn't for everyone. "Most of my clients, I would say, are in their late 20s," Kurzban says. "We don't get a lot of mommies."

It's a lot of jumping, turning, and squatting, so if you have sore joints or bad knees, this is probably not the fitness class for you.

But if you're in an exercise rut or just want to tone up while shaking (and sweating) to everything from Pitbull to Daft Punk, then welcome to ((305)).

To find out more about ((305)) Fitness  or to sign up for a class, click here.

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San Francisco has long been known for its vibrant gay and lesbian community, and it has the nightlife to prove it.

The city is home to a wide variety of bars and clubs featuring drag shows, costume nights, themed drinks, and wild dancing. 

With the help of our friends at Yelp, we compiled a list of the 10 best gay bars in San Francisco. They're spread out across the city and each offers something different, from a nautical theme to Monday Drag Nights. 

All 10 of the spots on the list get a single dollar sign rating from Yelp and offer great drink deals, proving that you don't need to spend a lot to have a great time in the Golden Gate City.

#10 Powerhouse

1347 Folsom St

Known for theme nights like a weekly Underwear Party and a liberal attitude towards pornography, Powerhouse makes for a rowdy night out in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood.

"The drinks are reasonably priced and fairly strong, although I'm mostly a beer drinker as well. It may smell like beer or piss from time to time but that's part of its charm. This bar is NOT for the faint of heart; but, that's why it's located in SOMA and not the Castro. Long live, Powerhouse!"Demetri M. wrote. 

#9 440 Castro (Formerly Daddy's)

440 Castro St

As its former name, Daddy's, might suggest, 440 Castro caters to a slightly older crowd, but that doesn't stop it from serving up hearty drinks from the hands of friendly, efficient bartenders. Yelpers call it a "bar for bears," and Tuesday is $2 beer night. 

"This Place is awesome! In the Heart of the Castro with no qualms of being a gay bar it rocks your socks off and much more if you let it!"Curtis C. wrote. 

#8 Gangway

841 Larkin Street

Gangway stands out as a nautically-themed dive bar with passion fruit martinis, $8 pitchers, and drag queens in full sparkling regalia. It's in the Tenderloin, one of San Francisco's more questionable neighborhoods, but Yelpers say that adds to the fun.  

"You often say that you'll start at Gangway, but you'll be there the whole night. Nice and friendly bartenders who remembers you after being there once. Cheap beers. And talk to the sometimes a bit strange costumers,"Jesper H. wrote.

Joshua Reeves is the CEO of a startup that raised a $6.1 million seed round from big Silicon Valley names.

His investors list reads as a who's who of Silicon Valley:

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, Yammer CEO David Sacks, Box CEO Aaron Levie, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, SurgarCRM CEO Larry Augustin, Zuora CEO and former Salesforce CMO Tien Tzou, Facebook VP of Partnerships Dan Rose, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, and more...

Reeves is also an angel investor himself.

Reeves' new company is called ZenPayroll, a cloud-based payments tool that makes it easier for small businesses to pay employees. We asked him how he got such a rockstar lineup to invest in ZenPayroll.

Reeves says it took him two weeks to raise the $6.1 million round. Each day was packed with eight or nine meetings. He started the process by reaching out to people he knew. It helped that he was going through Y Combinator, a notable startup accelerator program that has a strong alumni network. Reeves also had connections from Stanford, where he got his electrical engineering degree, and from Zazzle, a startup he joined as an early employee that now has hundreds of people.

Aaron Levie, for example, was a prior contact. Box's office used to be right next door to Zazzle's. Levie invested in a company called Karma; now Karma's CEO is one of Reeves' investors. Reeves also met Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman through Levie.

Once Reeves found potential investors, he still had to sell them. Reeves and his co-founders have attractive backgrounds; they've each started companies before and Reeves' last company was acquired. Reeves also used a compelling pitch deck to help share his mission with investors.

Click here to jump straight to pitch deck that helped Reeves raise the money >

"I'm a big fan of having a deck," says Reeves. "Especially at the seed stage. It's how you present your story. You want to have a logical connection between different pieces of information."

Reeves also asked investors a lot of questions during the meetings. He says he interviewed them as much as they interviewed him to make sure they'd be a good fit for his company. 

Finally, it's important to have a product that solves a pain point investors can relate to. ZenPayroll is a cloud-based payroll solution that's cheap for small businesses to use and easier to navigate than ADP or Paychex.

"The people we raised money from invested because they want to vicariously fix this industry," says Reeves. "You could tell which of them had experienced the payroll pain themselves. That's the heart of why angels invest even when they are still doing their own startups."

So, how can other startups have the similar success nabbing star angel investors?

Reeves offers the following pitch deck to other entrepreneurs when they're raising their first round of financing. It's the template ZenPayroll used to raise $6.1 million.

"Each meeting is an opportunity to describe your vision, paint a picture of the future, share your progress so far and the quality of your team," he says.

Before you create your startup's pitch deck, here's a general formatting tip:

Reeves recommends having a 2-5 word tagline for your company and a strong quote on the opening slide.

The vision should stand out on a slide of its own. It's the most important message a young startup can convey.

Tech consumers are becoming increasingly privacy-conscious, and the catalyst of late seems to be Edward Snowden's big reveal of PRISM, the NSA's domestic spying program.

But look at all the information about ourselves we voluntarily punt out into the universe – every single thought is tweeted, every photo gets posted to Facebook, every fireable offense is described in gripping detail on that blog you hope your boss never finds.

But the utility of these things, whether they help you stay productive or deliver a quick blast of serotonin to your brain, far outweigh the privacy concerns. If they didn't, no one would use them.

So this is the conundrum the tech innovators face today. We know that many people want to share their thoughts all the time, but they also want to be sure they can do so safely. How does the marketplace respond? There's not really a good answer yet.

Let's take a look at the latest generation of privacy-eschewing technology, whether it's available today or will be shortly.

Google Glass raises all kinds of privacy concerns.

People wearing Google Glass take photograph you and record video of you without you knowing about it.

Sure, there's a light that comes on when the wearer is doing this, but The Verge's Josh Topolsky points out that most people probably won't really know what it means.

Memoto raises very similar concerns.

The Memoto is a lifelogging device that you wear on your lapel. Its camera shoots a picture every 30 seconds. It aims to help make sure that you remember more of your every day life, but how do you explain this to the stranger on the elevator as you take two pictures of him in the minute it takes you to get to the ground floor?

Google Now relies upon you surrendering your privacy for it to work.

Google Now (think of it as Google's response to Apple's Siri) is a pretty impressive piece of software. Because it remembers your emails and Google searches, it can begin to anticipate your needs.

If you repeatedly search for Mets scores, it will automatically update you on the results of the latest game. Book a flight? Google Now will tell you when it's time to leave for the airport, even accounting for the traffic in your drive time.

Artist and photographer Nikolay Lamm from self-storage search engine StorageFront.com took pictures of New York City with a thermal imaging camera in order to show the unique temperature structure of urban areas.

In cities, a phenomenon known as the "urban heat island effect" causes air temperatures to be warmer than in nearby suburban or rural areas. There a number of reasons for this, including a large number of buildings and roads that absorb heat from the sun, a lack of plants that cool the air by evaporating water, and even heat generated by lots of human bodies.

The urban heat island effect concerns scientists since warmer air temperatures "can impact air quality, public health and the demand for energy,"according to NASA.

Lamm says he was inspired to see the urban heat island effect in action after walking around New York City on a sweltering 95-degree day.

In the following slides, John E. Frederick, a geophysicist from the University of Chicago, helps us to explain what is going on in each image and why.

The dark sidewalk (red) is much warmer than the lighter concrete border (green and yellow). Both features are warmer than the grass (blue). That's because grass, unlike man-made structures, can cool by transpiration, when water taken up by plants is converted into vapor and released into the atmosphere. Water in the background (dark blue) is the coolest surface in the image.

The Freedom Tower's reflective surface (rear-center) keeps this building cooler than older, nearby buildings shown in red. The trees in the foreground are the coolest objects due to the shade of surrounding buildings and transpiration.

The direct release of heat into the air is called "anthropogenic heat release." The warmest regions on this bus are near the vents (red), which release heat directly from the engine. The area near the engine at the rear of the bus is warmer (green) compared to the street and the passenger area (blue).

Cecilia and Carol live at an InnVision shelter in San Jose, California. The shelter is intended for families on a lower rung of the transitional housing ladder, but they ended up here after a fire forced them out of the shelter for women and kids they were living in.

Their new InnVision shelter is designed as one of the first steps into the shelter system and its rules are meant to help move people along to "next step" shelters like the one Cecilia and Carol were forced out of due to a fire.

"We are the homeless, homeless," Cecilia says, straightening the neckline of her bright pink shirt.

[Click here to read about the Vietnam Vet who pulled it together at a shelter]

Both mothers hold down jobs.

Cecilia works at an orthodontist's office, and while they provided her braces, they do not offer full-time work or benefits. Carol works nights at a local grocery store and stays with her two kids during the day. She walks 25 minutes along a poorly lit commercial street back to the shelter at midnight after catching the bus "home."

Neither woman can take their kids out to dinner because curfew is 6:00 p.m. and watching movies or enjoying family time is tough with open living areas and the general commotion. Cecilia says it's most difficult on her 16-year-old daughter who dreams of becoming a pediatrician.

"There are only so many things she can tell the kids at school; so many excuses she can make about why she can't go places or have them over. It's hard," Cecilia says, dabbing the corner of her eye with a tissue.

SEE ALSO: Our full coverage of Silicon Valley's homeless

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When Mama Red lost her Felton, Calif., flower shop 18 years ago, all of her savings went with it. She ended up homeless when she turned to California's shelter network and hated it.

"Living in shelters is like being in jail," she told Business Insider in mid-July. When we visited her in San Jose's homeless encampment called "The Jungle," the smell of rotting flesh saturated the air. "It's a raccoon," she said, pointing to a shopping cart behind her.

The list of shelter rules drove Mama Red to sleep briefly behind a gas station and from there to a freeway ramp. Five years ago she moved into The Jungle and says she has no regrets.

With the stench of a rotting raccoon in the shopping cart behind her, Mama Red explains how she lost her floral business 18 years ago. She chose to live on the streets instead of a shelter.

She's been living in The Jungle for five years. Her pregnant daughter had been staying with her but was picked up by police for a drug violation.

Red fought to hold onto this spot after police came in and swept the camp clean last April.

California's Silicon Valley is justifiably celebrated as the center of America's innovation economy.

Some of the most beloved and successful companies in the world are located there, built by generations of entrepreneurs, investors, and engineers who have used their immense talents to change the world.

And yet, despite Silicon Valley's remarkable wealth, talent, and inventions, the Valley has also failed to meet all of its residents' most basic needs, starting with food and shelter. The Valley, in fact, is home to the largest homeless camp in the continental United States, which is located in a middle-class neighborhood in San Jose.

In Silicon Valley, the gap between a company like Google and a vast homeless camp like "The Jungle" is called The Great Divide.

Business Insider went to Silicon Valley and San Francisco last month to learn more about The Great Divide.

We were surprised every step of the way by the courage of those on the streets and the generosity of individuals and corporations throughout Silicon Valley.

The infographic below is followed by some photos that show just how close to home this problem hits.

Silicon Valley is best known for good jobs ...

... great education ...

... sprawling homes ...

Dan is homeless in Silicon Valley. When Dan's unemployment compensation ran out four years ago he managed to stay indoors by going room-to-room at the homes of friends and family until finding himself on the street in 2011.

Business Insider met Dan in mid-July when a government medical team led us to his camp along a stretch of Coyote Creek in San Jose on a routine health visit.

The camp backs up to a community garden and major thoroughfare, and despite the close proximity to residents, Dan says local law enforcement leaves the couple dozen homeless people here alone.

"The police don't bother us," he says through a mouthful of granola bar given to him by a nurse. "And I really appreciate it."

Dan gets by on $147 a month in general assistance and has no idea how he'll get off the street and back into a home. "I'd love to get housing," he tells us. "Man a hot shower ... yeah that'd be nice. Why can't the government get me a room?"

Check out how Dan lives below, and click here for more on the Silicon Valley Homelessness.

Dan lost his home in 2009 when his unemployment benefits ran out and he's been homeless for two years.

This is Dan's camp along Coyote Creek in San Jose. Only steps away is a community garden and residential neighborhood.

The difference between the residents sleeping a few hundred feet away and where Troy sleeps is immense.

The medical team visiting Dan try to keep the homeless as healthy as possible, but taking care of yourself out here isn't easy.

The people here have a rapport with the medical team they have with no one else we've seen. Their concern is apparent and Dan is clearly enjoying this week's visit.

What's the most difficult part of being homeless?

"Homelessness has everything to do with intergalactic travel," Dan tells us, a fantasy that provides him a mental escape from the harsh realities he lives in.

Click here to see just how big of a problem Silicon Valley faces.

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When GiGi was 14 years old, the IRS unearthed a small discrepancy in the accounts of her parents' small party supply store in downtown Palo Alto.

See the photos »

A small error with her mom's accounting left the family with $7,000 in missed taxes, penalties, and fees — the equivalent of nearly $20,000 in today's dollars — that sent the store down a path from which it was unable to recover.

While her parents lost their business, what GiGi lost was arguably much worse.

She'd been IQ tested a few years before the IRS came into her parents' life and scored well above genius level. Her parents were supportive, and working together they saw GiGi graduate high school with honors at 14 and get accepted to Stanford.

With the scholarship money, grants, and loans against the collateral from her family's store would provide, GiGi prepared herself to launch into the world with everything she had. Unfortunately, with the IRS lien on the store and penalties piling up as her parents struggled to pay, GiGi never got the money she needed to make Stanford a reality.

The closest she ever got to Stanford after that was sleeping on the San Jose Number 22 bus as it plied its way from Palo Alo to San Jose, then back again; a run it makes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which earned it the designation Hotel 22 from the areas homeless.

When GiGi was done telling Business Insider her story, she broke out a bent cigarette and said: "I don't need a handout, but I really could use a hand up."

GiGi has been on and off the streets since her family lost their business to the IRS when she was a teenager.

She's lived in tents with abusive men, and throughout it all she says her dog Tara is the only thing that gave her reason to keep going.

When we visited GiGi, she lived in this camp on Coyote Creek with a man named Dee who was just out of prison.

Latisha enjoyed a career in the medical field for years. When cutbacks forced her hours down, she lost her home and fell into life on the streets.

She talked with Business Insider in mid-July, sitting by her tent in "The Jungle," an immense Silicon Valley homeless camp. The Jungle is dangerous and the nearest conveniences like running water and restrooms are more than a mile away.

The embarrassment of being homeless sometimes keeps people from seeking help, and it's no different for Latisha, who prefers the hardship over telling her family what has happened to her life. 

"I come from a very educated family," Latisha says. "One of my brothers is an engineer and the other is a doctor. I just couldn't bear the shame of them knowing about this."

She gestures toward her tent and the small knickknacks she has hung on the tree shadowing her camp. 

"Someday I'll get another job, get on with my life and my family will never know," she says.

Latisha's been homeless for 13 years and as she speaks there's little doubt that her family's ignorance — and her dignity — may be the only things she has left that mean anything to her at all.

Good shoes are a must in The Jungle. The hike in can be treacherous, and hauling heavy bottles filled with drinking water is a chore that never ends.

Latisha didn't feel her camp was neat enough to allow many pictures of it when we were there. But the things strung about the camp's perimeter shows her struggle to maintain some sort of normalcy.

She uses a tree like one might use a bookshelf, to display items important to her like the "Smile God loves you" placard.

Click here to see our full coverage on homelessness in the Silicon Valley.

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The Jungle is the largest of many Silicon Valley homeless encampments, and the 65 acres bordering Coyote Creek in San Jose can be home to up to 175 people at a time.

From kids to convicts to moms and dads and the mentally ill, The Jungle is a desperate mix of people out of whatever options they might have once had.

When Business Insider visited The Jungle over the course of a week in mid-July the city was getting ready to clear the homeless out again after they had just settled back in from a previous eviction.

It's a back-and-forth with no easy answers as Silicon Valley's cost of living increases, but the jobs and affordable housing needed to keep its poorest residents inside and off the streets remains unseen.

Welcome to the Jungle, the largest homeless camp in the Silicon Valley and continental United States.

Source: City of San Jose

Business Insider visited The Jungle several times in mid-July to talk to the people who live here and see what their lives are like.

The conditions here are deplorable.

Life in California's Silicon Valley homeless encampment, “The Jungle,” is difficult on the best of days, but for women the challenges are especially daunting: Rapes are not uncommon.

To better protect themselves, Patricia, 36, and Giggles, 55, live together in a shelter they've dug beneath the California scrub land.

Though the effort provides them with some peace of mind, it is shelters like this that confound city officials who look at "entrenchment" as a thornier issue in the overall homeless problem plaguing Silicon Valley. The county sweeps The Jungle clean every few months and fills shelters like this in, but residents are hauling the dirt out again even before squad cars leave the scene.

When we met Patricia and Giggles in mid-July, Patricia had just gotten back from raiding a dumpster for scrap metal and Giggles was doing some housekeeping. 

Here's how they live.

Giggles has been homeless for most of her life since she was 18 and says she has lived with a series of abusive men in between.

Patricia has been homeless since she was 25 and earns money by selling scrap metal.

The two of them built this underground shelter to offer some safety and security against attacks and theft.

They wash their clothes here by the creek down the bank from their camp.

Here, Giggles rakes up small pieces of trash around her walkway. While neither of them have been in homes for some time, they do their best to keep their camp clean.

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It's impossible to ignore the role drug abuse plays in contributing to Silicon Valley's more than 7,000 homeless residents. Sue worked at Hewlett Packard before a methamphetamine addiction tore her life apart and left her on the streets.

She was only three classes shy of her undergraduate degree when she lost everything. It was only after being arrested and spending time in jail that she put her life back together and found the help she needed.

Today, Sue shares a home donated to Silicon Valley shelter network InnVision with three other women, and is polishing her coding skills in the hope of landing a new job.

She opened her home to Business Insider in mid-July and told us, "This is the happiest I've ever been."

It wasn't long ago that Sue worked for HP in Silicon Valley making nearly six figures a year before a drug addiction tore her life apart and left her on the streets.

Today she lives in a nice home in a quiet neighborhood. The residence was a private donation by the InnVision shelter network. InnVision provides homes to women making their way off the streets and back into society.

The four-bedroom home is spacious.

When Ed was discharged from the Army in 1975 he had a difficult time finding his place in civilian life. Only after spending time in prison did he find his way here to the Boccardo Regional Reception Center in San Jose and finally put his life back on the right track.

"My youngest granddaughter told me I'm not doing anything and I should be in school," Ed says. "So I'm taking business classes at a community college while I work my way out of here."

The room Ed shares with another veteran is unlike the rest of the shelter: The pair can come and go as they please, and the room opens onto a manicured courtyard with a patio set, weight bench, garden, and a gated wall that only vets and staff  have a key to open.

"This has been home for nearly two years," Ed says. "But I'm ready to move on. No way I could have done this without the help they've given me."

He nods at the two women from the shelter providing us the tour. They smile and shake their heads. "No Ed," one of them says. "This was all you."

Ed was in the Vietnam conflict during his stint in the Army and was discharged nearly 40 years ago.

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides EHC Lifebuilders in San Jose with funds for rooms like this for Ed and other vets for up to two years.

The vets are assigned case workers who help them outline their goals, find employment, and prepare for the future.

Ed gave his granddaughter some money to go to a concert and the girl picked up this patch for him while she was there. "I can't wait to have a place of my own for my family to visit," he says.

See our full report on the Silicon Valley homeless problem.

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Silicon Valley has a serious homeless problem, despite the fact that the Valley is home to some of the richest zip codes in the nation.

Over the past eight years the U.S. watched its homeless population decline by more than 130,000 people.

That's a nearly 17 percent drop that flies in the face of Silicon valley's 8 percent increase in its homeless population over the last two years.

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Not including San Francisco — which has a serious homeless problem of its own — the Silicon Valley stretches through the Santa Clara Valley down from Redwood City, through Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose.

What is causing the trend-bucking homelessness problem in the area? In addition to the rising cost of housing and lack of adequately paying jobs, we found that mental illness and substance abuse are problems in the Valley's homeless community like elsewhere in the country. Forty percent of the country's homeless suffer from substance abuse or mental illness and though the National Alliance on Mental Illness calls California's mentally ill housing the "gold standard," the state cut its mental health budget by 21 percent from 2009 to 2012. 

"It's a perfect storm of homelessness," San Jose's Housing 100's Jennifer Loving told Business Insider referring to the budget cuts, lack of allocated housing, recession-era tax breaks in the county, a lack of adequately paying jobs, a growing wealth gap, and rising home prices for sales and rentals.

Barry Swenson Builders told Business Insider that Silicon Valley's residents can expect a 1,000-square-foot "tear down" home to sell for more than a million dollars. Then there's the rental market. A two-bedroom rental at the low end of the $1,800 to $4,800 market, can be tough to find. The apartments that do come to market often receive hundreds of applicants.

Barry Swenson Builders also said it had more than 600 applications for a 29-unit complex they were building in Mountain View, just south of Palo Alto. Rental prices went from an all-time 2009 low to the highest-priced market in the U.S. in 2013.

It is no wonder that in the midst of this collection of wealth and crazy real estate there is a serious problem with homelessness. More than 7,600 people are sleeping homeless on any given night in the Valley. In Palo Alto — ground zero for Silicon Valley wealth — the city council has made clear the 157 homeless have worn out their welcome.

How homelessness is dealt with varies from city to city but is no less of an issue in each. Palo Alto has a robust police force and the city just passed legislation outlawing people from sleeping in their cars. The city also just imposed restrictions keeping homeless people from sleeping at the one place in town that has public showers. That center was just blocks from Larry Page's home.

In San Jose, hundreds of police officers have quit for higher-paying  jobs. A lack of police presence combined with open land along creeks and trails has made San Jose a go-to destination for many of Silicon Valley's homeless. 

Business Insider spent a week in mid-July visiting the Valley, talking to government workers, volunteers, non-profits, and the homeless residents themselves. We also spent a day on San Francisco Bay with Larry Ellison's Team Oracle to see what a pair of $10 million sailboats can really do. The contrast was stark.

These photos and this series take a close look at the homelessness problem in the Silicon Valley, including profiles of former coders who lived on the streets, Vietnam Vets,working mothers who can't afford rent, and the people and organizations who are trying to affect change. 

We looked more at the homeless issues in the South Bay compared to San Francisco, as the homeless problem in San Francisco proper is already a well-documented problem. 

The Santa Clara Valley in Northern California is home to some of the largest tech companies in the world ...

But Silicon Valley's per capita homeless population rivals any area in the nation.

People live well here, as this Mount Hamilton home overlooking the Valley shows.