
Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for My Friend's Place
Years before Halsey was a Grammy-nominated, world-renowned singer, she was a homeless teen who contemplated taking desperate measures to makes ends meet.
In 2016, the singer, born Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, told Rolling Stone that when she was 19, her parents kicked her out of their home after she quit community college. In an emotional speech at the Ending Youth Homelessness: A Benefit for My Friend's Place gala in Los Angeles on Saturday, Halsey, now 24, recalled her past life on the streets and how she contemplated prostituting herself.
"When I was living in New York, I was a teenager. My friends were picking out decorations for their dorms, and I was debating on whether or not I should let a stranger inside of me so I could pay for my next meal," Halsey said in her speech at the Ending Youth Homelessness benefit at the Hollywood Palladium.
"It wasn't because I did something bad. It wasn't because something was wrong with me, and it wasn't because my parents didn't love me—because they did very much," she added. "But a series of unfortunate circumstances lead me to be in that position, and it can happen to absolutely anyone."
In her interview with Rolling Stone, Halsey recalled how she was broke after her parents kicked her out, and once "bought a four-pack of Red Bull and used it to stay up overnight over the course of two or three days, because it was less dangerous to not sleep than it was to sleep somewhere random and maybe get raped or kidnapped."