‘I was homeless at 16’: DJ Charlie Sloth on rough sleeping and living in poverty as a young father

Best known for creating and fronting popular freestyle rap format Fire in the Booth, Camden’s Charlie Sloth has shared his experience rough sleeping in his local park when he was aged just 16.

In a new interview exclusive to this week’s Big Issue, Sloth reveals he found himself “sleeping on park benches” after leaving home following a family fallout.

“I was homeless at 16. I struggled with rules and discipline and order. I was a very chaotic youth,” Sloth tells us in the new Big Issue, on sale now. “My parents didn’t want me in the house. For the first few weeks I was couch surfing, but that can only last so long.

“Stubbornness kicked in. I was like, I’m not going home, and started sleeping on park benches. I never told anyone that’s what I was doing. There was a park in Camden called St Martin’s Gardens which closed every night, and I used to climb the fence and sleep in there.

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“One night I got drunk and didn’t wake up till 11 o’clock. Obviously, there’s people walking past and seeing this kid sleeping on the bench. A woman started talking to me who worked for a charity called Centrepoint. They stepped in, got involved and were instrumental in turning my life around and giving me the support system to help me move out of the situation that I was in.

“Sometimes it’s very difficult to believe in yourself when things aren’t going well, but all it takes is one person to put a bit of belief in you, for you to realise that anything is possible.”

Charlie Sloth also describes struggling to make ends meet after becoming a father at 22. “By the time I got to 22, I’d become a father,” he says. “That was a massive turning point in terms of responsibility. I had to put my dreams on the back burner, and concentrate on making money, which was super difficult.

“We were living in a garden shed where there was no sanitation and I was working long hours every day for not very much money. I was struggling to buy nappies and milk. But my experience of homelessness was a motivator, not wanting to go back to that.”

Sloth said his personal experiences have left him with a deep admiration of the Big Issue and the earning opportunity it offers to people in extreme poverty.

“There is someone who’s in an identical situation to the one I was in, who hasn’t met that person who believed in them yet to give them that belief, to go on and fulfil their dreams.

“Big Issue were the first to do that for homeless people. It’s not just, ‘Here you go, take that.’ It’s like, ‘We’re going to give you a product and an infrastructure, go out and do it yourself. We believe you can do it. Go out and earn your money.’

“I fucking love it. I just got goosebumps saying it, but to this day, any time I’m in London, I’ll stop for every Big Issue seller, I’ll have a chat. I’ll buy the magazine, and I’ll leave London, I kid you not, with five or six copies in my car.”

Charlie Sloth is interviewed in this week’s special edition fronted by fellow DJ James Hype and featuring news of an exciting new gig in aid of Bristol’s homeless community. For more information, buy the magazine from your local vendor or buy from Big Issue Shop.

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