Pop Music Star Reveals Struggle With Homelessness: Sinitta Opens Up

'On the outside everything looked great and fine, but I was actually sleeping in my car,' the singer revealed.

By Allison Schonter

Sinitta is opening up about her struggles with homelessness. During a recent appearance on Loose Women, the '80s pop sensation revealed that just years after topping the charts with songs like "So Macho" and "Toy Boy," she was forced out of her home and had to live in her car during the '90s.

Discussing the ordeal with Ruth Langsford, Coleen Nolan, Dame Kelly Holmes, and Kèllè Bryan, after Kèllè said she heard Sinitta had got herself "into bother," per the Mirror, Sinitta admitted, "it's true, I think this was back in the early nineties, I did live in my car because I hadn't managed money well." The singer also said that she struggled with "a tax bill," and due to the financial difficulties, she had to sell off all her assets, recalling how she "knee-jerk sold the house to pay my tax bill and gave up the house to a friend. I probably should have taken advice and had a mortgage or something, but you know when you're young, you're just trying to manage it."

After selling her home, Sinitta said she was left with no place to go and was forced to live out of her car. She said the most difficult part of the ordeal was not living in her car, but instead "the shame" and "the embarrassment" of having nowhere to live following her success in the '80s.

"I desperately didn't want anyone else to know because I'm supposed to be 'happy Sinitta and everything's great,' especially because this is like late '80s and early '90s," she recalled. "I just remember doing everything I could so that no one would know."

Sinitta told the panel she managed to keep her living situation a secret by using public amenities for showering and relying on self-storage units for her clothes. She said she had a small amount of money remaining for food.

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"On the outside everything looked great and fine, but I was actually sleeping in my car," an emotional Sinitta said.

Sinitta became a pop sensation in the '80s after her single "So Macho" debuted at 59 on the UK charts in 1986, eventually climbing to No. 2 later that year and spending six weeks in the Top 20 in the UK. She followed the single with the release of her debut album, Sinitta!, in 1987. That album included hit singles like "Toy Boy" and "GTO." The singer went on to release two additional albums – 1989's Wicked and 1995's Naughty Naughty – and score hits with songs like "Cross My Broken Heart," "Right Back Where We Started From," and "Hitchin' a Ride." Following appearances on The X Factor alongside Simon Cowell and a stint as a Loose Women panelist, Sinitta returned to music in 2014 with her comeback single "So Many Men, So Little Time."

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