Street Reporter

Sheila White, 59, dreams of becoming a photojournalist and escaping her life of homelessness. Yearning to make this change, she studies at a local university while completing homework late into the night at the women’s shelter. As a reporter at Street Sense newspaper, Sheila and her team decide to cover the story of DC’s “Tent City.” Along the way, they meet a charismatic tent resident named Mike who, much like Sheila, longs for life outside the underpass. As the city moves to shut down the encampment, our subjects’ journeys are threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic, with unexpected results. Street Reporter is a deeply intimate, character-based film produced with community collaborators that provides a window into the power of community journalism in one woman’s life, casting a vision of the re-humanizing effects of life’s most basic need: a place to call home.