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It depends on how he is approaching it.
If he's going in amongst the homeless guys and saying "hey guys I'm a reporter and I'm doing a story on homelessness and I figured I can't get an accurate picture of homelessness unless I lived like you guys for awhile" then I have absolutely no problem with that. That's not only good journalism, it's sacrificing quite a bit to get the story. Hats off to him.
If, however, he's tricking the homeless people into thinking he's actually homeless,t hen it is a breach of ethics. You only go undercover if you meet certain conditions, among them:
1) There is NO other way to get the story (i.e. undercover expose of the meat industry because if you go and ask the plant manager, he's obviously not gonna tell you he's shipping out contaminated meat)
2) It is vital to the community you serve to get the story. (i.e. exposing the contamination in the meat industry is vital to the community because otherwise they'll eat it and get sick, whereas going undercover as a housekeeper to find out who the mayor is sleeping with is not of vital interest to the community)
In the homeless case, neither of those conditions are met - condition 1 isn't met because you don't have to deceive in order to get the story and condition 2 isn't met because the only community that takes VITAL interest in the plight of the homeless is the homeless community itself, and deceiving the community you're purporting to serve is not only unethical, but stupid.
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