Beyond the Headlines: Reporting on Homelessness

In the last week of 2025, five members of our reporting team created a five-part series on Homelessness in Delaware. At a time of year where news readership normally dips, this series resulted in some of the Spotlight Delaware’s highest readership numbers in several months.

During this episode of “Beyond the Headlines,” three of the reporters discuss the collaborative nature of reporting on this issue and how the team worked to ensure that the voices of people experiencing homelessness were centered in this series.

The podcast is hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Land Use reporter Olivia Marble was the first to share her perspective.

Back in November, Editor-in-Chief Jake Owens pitched the idea to the team of this multi-part series on homelessness in Delaware.

Now, much like the general population, reporters try to take time off around the holidays. So the team looks for projects they could do the reporting work on in advance, and then have the articles ready to go during the end of the year period. 

What made Jake think homelessness was a good focus for one of these multi-part end of year projects?

If I remember correctly, he basically said, “Hey, I’ve noticed throughout all of 2025 that a bunch of different groups are talking about this issue, and trying to do something about it.” He thought that it would be a good idea to do a broad overview, just putting together all the reporting we’d done over the past year so, like you said, we could have this really in depth project that we could publish over the holidays and take a bit of a break. I completely agreed with him and that’s why I wanted to head up this project. 

You jumped at the chance of serving as a project manager for this series. Why did you want to do that? Why did you want to take on more work and what did that work consist of? 

I am always looking for ways to expand my skills and leadership is a super important skill. 

I thought that it would be nice to have a reporter led-project. I didn’t want to be the ultimate boss and make all the decisions. I wanted it to be led by all of the reporters, so I was, like you said, a project manager. I scheduled the meetings, I coordinated between the different teams. I led the meetings and I did a little bit of editing, making sure that all the articles flowed together and that the right anecdotes were in the right stories and that nothing was repeated. 

I worked with one of our editors, Tim Carlin, to come up with a draft outline for how the whole series would go. I brought it to the reporting team who volunteered to be part of this and I said, “Hey, do you have any suggestions? Do you have any feedback?”

We workshopped it a bit. And then I had everyone rank which stories they would like to write out of this outline. I emphasized from the beginning that if the reporting process showed that the outline wasn’t working the way that I had written it, that we should change it. And that’s exactly what happened

What do you take away from the working process with your colleagues on this project?

I think that reporter-led projects are something that we should continue doing and collaborative reporter-led processes, because during our weekly check-in meetings we often talked about what things we were finding and it would help everyone in their reporting process just to have these different perspectives.

It would make me think of different questions I could ask my sources. I really enjoyed the collaborative nature of it, for sure. 

Your two articles focused on supportive housing and affordable housing. Why did you gravitate towards affordable housing? 

You know, it’s funny, when I was doing the article about supportive housing I had to ask people to stop talking about affordable housing because I had done enough reporting on it. That just goes to show when people talk about solutions to homelessness, they are talking about affordable housing. It’s really something that comes up again and again and again because people often see that as the root cause to homelessness – that there’s not enough affordable housing.

Common wisdom is homelessness is about drugs or it’s about mental health or it’s about too generous social services programs. But there’s research out there that proves that that isn’t a cause, it’s a symptom.

The metaphor that I included, which I really like, is that it’s like a game of musical chairs where maybe someone with a broken leg won’t be able to find a chair as fast when they’re playing musical chairs. Maybe they’ll be the one left behind, but someone is going to be left behind.

As many people talk about affordable housing as the solution, the same amount of people talk about affordable housing as, oh, we don’t want that here.

You have a quote in your article from a person that says more or less, I’m not against affordable housing, but this just isn’t the place for it.

It’s clearly an argument that gets made a lot. As you interviewed people for the articles, did you find any affordable housing advocates who had found a solution to that critique? 

There’s people who have less valid arguments about it, but all of them feel the same deep, profound emotion of “I don’t want to see my home changed.”  And that is something that is so relatable, understandable, but also something that’s so tough to argue against. What are you going to say?

I think one solution is to change the perception around affordable housing and who are the neighbors there. Because I think there is prejudice in a lot of people’s opposition to affordable housing, thinking, oh, maybe these are drug addicts. 

I can’t say if any individual feels that way or not, but maybe if we do more to dispel those sorts of prejudices and to realize that people who are in affordable housing are just working families and that they can be really great neighbors.

Maybe that’ll take away some of the prejudice that might fuel these angry feelings. So that maybe, hopefully, all that’s left is the actual debate of can the roads handle this.

Last question for you, as project manager, what do you hope the impact of this series is? 

I hope that it will facilitate more collaboration between different people who are doing different things to help solve the homelessness crisis. I think a lot of times people can get stuck in their own world of what they’re doing to help the crisis. But there’s a lot of different approaches and you need a lot of different approaches.

Everyone who is experiencing homelessness experiences it for their own individual reasons, and there needs to be a multitude of different approaches to help people get out of it.

Reporter Brianna Hill joined the podcast next.

Brianna, you and Nick Stonesifer co-wrote the article in the series focusing on homeless shelters, but you also spent time with your colleague Julia Merola out at Christina Park in Wilmington.

What was your reporting process like co-writing with Nick?

This was the first time Nick and I co-wrote a story together. Unfortunately, I fell ill during the time we were working on the story, but Nick was very supportive. 

Initially, the story was supposed to be two separate articles. One showing the current state of shelters and the other showing future endeavors that the state would explore. We decided that it made more sense to create one big story covering both aspects. 

We would have some check-ins. Nick is downstate and I’m upstate, so we were just making sure that we had the voices that we needed, making sure that we got people who were unhoused, but also shelter volunteers, experts, other organizers in the community. 

So we would do check-ins and then we kind of just wrote our pieces separately and then came together at the end to make sure everything was cool before we sent it off to the editors. 

You talked about making sure you had the voices you needed, and it seemed to be really important to the team to make sure that this series included the voices of people experiencing homelessness. True? 

Yeah, that’s true. 

What considerations go into your mind as you are out there interviewing people who are experiencing homelessness? 

I think the biggest thing is to make sure that you’re making those [individuals] feel comfortable. 

I know from my time at Christina Park specifically, sometimes I heard that people will come there and drop off food and things like that, but they’ll do so with their camera on. Whether they’re making some sort of content for social media, or kind of saying, “Hey, look at this good thing, or look at this great thing that I’m doing. I’m helping the community.” 

You know, it’s our job to report and that’s just what we do and it’s important for us to get those community voices and those stories.So just making sure that they know that this is to  spread awareness about a particular topic and that it’s essentially to make sure that their voices are heard. Not to personally benefit from anything in that sort of way, 

Did you face suspicion or pushback? How do you get someone to actually want to talk to you?

We just go up to people and tell them who we are and let them know what we’re doing. When I went to Christina Park with my colleague Julia to get an interview for both of our stories, we interviewed a gentleman named Philly – that’s his nickname. 

Ron “Philly” Simmons, right?

Yes. One of the first things he asked us was, “What are you guys gonna do for me? Like, can, can I get a sandwich or can I get some, some food?” 

Covering the homeless community, that’s something that I’ve come into contact with before, and we did get the okay that we could make a donation, which was nice. It made me feel better about just talking to people and then kind of just leaving the camp. 

The people I’ve spoken to were open to speaking with us.They want the word to get out about their needs. But, you know, they’re struggling, so they’re always going to look for an avenue of support and I’m glad that we were able to provide that in some way. 

I understand that the first time out there you got some great pictures, but then ran into some challenges that ultimately ended up being helpful. 

Yes. The first time me and Julia went to Christina Park, we interviewed Philly. I got some great photos of him and the park. And then I believe it was the next day, maybe like two days after, I lost my SD card, because I put it in my back pocket. It’s a lesson for later. 

Because I lost it, I had to go back and get some photos and I ended up going back to the park about three times after that because I had to catch Philly. In the times I went, he just wasn’t there. So when I did go, I kind of took a minute to speak to other people as opposed to just saying, oh, Philly’s not here, I’ll come back tomorrow.

So each time I went, I spent an hour, maybe an hour and thirty, at the park just talking to folks. And so now I’m a little bit more familiar with the community. They know who I am and you know, I know who they are. And because I cover homelessness in the city anyway, it was a great connection to make.

Everything happens for a reason. 

You went back again to Christina Park for another story and Philly had some feedback for you on this particular story. 

Yeah. Someone showed the article to him and he said it looked great. He was very happy with his picture that was in the headline photo. 

He did make comments about how he thinks, he hopes that the story that he shared will spread awareness and maybe some people can do more to help out the homeless community. 

He noted that there was a couple from New Jersey who read the story, and I guess they went to Philly and bought him a jacket that has “Philly” engraved on it. I should have took a picture of it, but he showed us the jacket.

So that happened because of our story. So that was fun and he was smiling. So that made us, you know, it was a good moment.

Another interesting aspect that came out of this for me, or another lesson that came out of this for me was that everyone’s story is different. When you encounter one homeless person or one unhoused person, it’s just one story out of a million stories.

So when I went down there, after I had lost my SD card, I was looking for Philly and I ran into someone else, named Alfonso. He’s also featured in our story. He’s an older gentleman, maybe fifties, and he is a veteran born and raised in Wilmington.

He used to work, I think in manufacturing and he fell through the cracks. He basically told us he has a support system. He has a sister that has a house that he could move into. But he said that everything was too girly. He made a comment about how the bathroom was so small and there’s pink shower curtains.

I remember saying, well, aren’t you being a little picky? And he said, “Well, I can be picky, you know, it’s my life.” 

And you know, I completely get it. 

So I guess it just goes to show that some people are in a way comfortable, depending on the situation. But there’s always nuance to that too. I don’t know why he’s comfortable being in the park or how badly he wants to leave.

But, you know, it was another interesting perspective that we got from doing that reporting. 

Health reporter Nick Stonesifer was the last member of the team to share his thoughts on the series.

Nick contributed to two articles in the series, one on homeless shelters with Brianna Hill, and then the closing article in the series with Olivia Marble

When you shared your article about shelter beds on social media you mentioned that it’s been a pleasure working through this with Brianna. Can you just talk a little bit about how working on an article with another reporter is different from going solo, and where does that pleasure lie? 

It’s usually a lot more collaborative, which is always nice. It’s always great to hear different opinions about where to go and making sure all your angles are covered.

It’s just a lot easier, too. You’re able to cover a lot more ground,

It’s great working with other people. It’s more efficient and, at the end of the day, it’s about the quality of the work that’s put out rather than just having one name attached to it.

How did you and Bri literally partner on this? 

We initially had multiple different article ideas and a lot changed as we went through this. Eventually we realized there was a lot of overlap between a story I was working on and a story Bri was going to work on. So we agreed to combine like ideas.

The article on shelters includes experiences at shelters in Dover and Seaford. You are based in southern Delaware now, so I’m guessing those are the places that you visited for the story. Is that right? 

Yes. I had done a story with the shelter in Dover in the past about addiction treatment in the state. For the shelter in Seaford, this is my first time talking with that organization and getting to know the work they do around the county.

As I’ve talked to the other reporters on this series, it’s become very clear that centering the voices of people who are experiencing homelessness was important to you all. 

As you work with that population, were there any considerations or concerns in your mind as you tried to build those relationships and include those voices in the stories?

For me, when I’m talking to people in communities at large that are often stigmatized in the newspaper, misrepresented or just haven’t spoken to the newspaper or the media before, you always give extra consideration. You always let people know what they’re signing up for.

Give grace, give space, not pressure people into doing anything. If somebody’s not comfortable with their picture being taken, you know, don’t take their picture. Just extra considerations and being respectful of opportunity to begin with.

Did that always work for you on this series? Or were there any times there was a fail and you couldn’t convince somebody that they should talk to you? 

In Seaford when I was there, nobody who was homeless at the time and was spending a night in the shelter wanted to talk. But that’s not uncommon in reporting. No is a reporter’s most common word. We hear that far more often than we hear. Yes.

So in Seaford, the shelter rep asked if anybody wanted to talk and there was just nothing?

It was a quiet crowd, tough crowd. But it’s not the end of the world. I talked to the guy who was running the shelter that night, Glen, and he had a compelling story.

At one point he was staying in overnight shelters. For the past couple years, he had been volunteering on the food lines and this year was his first year on the overnight shelters as a volunteer. So, he had a pretty compelling story and had a lot of experience to share about the problems people in Sussex County are facing.

One of those nights, I don’t remember if it was Dover or Seaford, you went as a pair with Julia even though you weren’t necessarily working on an article together. What was the thinking behind going together as a pair? 

Usually it’s easier in that you can focus on reporting. One person can focus on reporting, the other can focus on getting pictures and capturing the moments. It’s easier that way. 

When I went to Dover, I went with Olivia. She took pictures of Vinny, who’s quoted in the fifth story we did, while I did the interview. And same thing with sources in the shelter bed story. I was doing the interviews, Julia was getting art, walking around. So it’s usually easier to work in a pair that way too.

Was there anything during your reporting on this process that was particularly eye-opening for you? 

When Maggie and I went to the Georgetown encampment on the tracks at the end of Douglas Street – it’s a pretty eye-opening experience. 

You walk like a quarter mile in on these train tracks and there’s trash all over the place. There’s used needles on the ground, needle caps, and, you know, a lot of trash and you get further back, a lot of tents. You see what people are really living like, and you wish for better for people.

The entire series ends with a candlelight vigil in Seaford hosted by the Housing Alliance of Delaware on the winter solstice, which was held as part of a national memorial meant to remember lives cut short by homelessness. How did you find out about the vigil? 

I got a press release about a week before it happened, just letting me know that it was going to be happening. We talked it over, about who was gonna go and I volunteered to go to Seaford.

What was that experience like for you personally? 

You know, it’s a powerful moment. You get there. It’s very quaint, very quiet. It’s in this parking lot in a church in Seaford. It’s avery quiet area. It’s a really heavy experience when they start reading off the names and it takes a few minutes to get through everybody.

It’s serious stuff. It really adds a layer to it. 

How did you and the reporting team decide that was the way to end the whole five-part series?

I think Olivia had mentioned that this might be a good way to end it.

It’s a very impactful moment to end on, and centers it back to the impact of policy changes and what’s going on in the state and the impact it has on real people. You know, these are people’s children, and there’s a lot of people that you won’t know. There’s a lot of people who probably have died and we’ll never know. It’s a very serious thing. 

When I lived in Wilmington before moving to Sussex, there was this guy I saw on the corner all the time over by the Chase Bank parking lot. I talked to him a few times and if I had some extra stuff in my lunch, I’d give him some food on my way to work and just kind of talk to him.

But I haven’t seen him in a few times since I’ve been back to Wilmington. Hope he’s doing all right.