‘This Is NOT the American Way’: En Vogue Singer Dawn Robinson Drops Bombshell About Being Homeless and Living In Her Car for Three Years
March 12, 2025
En Vogue songstress Dawn Robinson has been quiet on the music scene for some time. Now, she has broken her silence, leaving fans concerned after getting candid about her current living situation.
The former En Vogue member bravely took to her YouTube channel—which she’s apparently had for at least two years—to make the shocking confession that she’s been living in her car since 2022.
In the nearly 19-minute video that she posted on March 11, Robinson shamelessly updated fans on her life by detailing the events that led up to her current living circumstances.
Dawn Robinson reveals that she is now homeless (left) and is now living in car in the decades since she was a singer with En Vogue. That group consisted of (from left, right photo) Robinson, Rhona Bennett, Maxine Jones, Terry Ellis, and Cindy Herron. (Photos: OfficialDawnRobinson/YouTube; Charley Gallay/Getty Images for City of Hope)“You guys, for the past three, almost three years, I have been living in my car,” she said before doing a mini scream. “I said it. Oh my God, it’s out.”
Robinson revealed that during the pandemic, she was living with her parents in Vegas. However, that didn’t last due to her mother’s toxic behavior.
“If you remember, if you guys were with me in 2020, I did like 105,000 interviews, and in the interim, I was living with my parents in Vegas. That was wonderful until it wasn’t,” she said. “I love my mom, but she became very angry. And a lot of her anger she was taking out on me, and I was her target all the time. And I was like ‘I can’t deal with this.’”
After leaving her mother’s home, Dawn lived in her vehicle for a month until one of her managers convinced her to move to Los Angeles.
“I love L.A., so I said OK, and he said that I could stay with him, so I was OK,” Robinson continued. “He’s like, ‘I don’t have a lot of room, but I’ll make room for you.’ And then when I got to his place, he actually didn’t have room for me.”
The unnamed manager offered to put Robinson in a hotel for a night, but one night turned into an eight-month stay. She even researched apartments herself, but whenever she asked the manager to meet her, he would come up with excuses about not liking the apartment or the neighborhood.
But from Robinson’s perspective, she was the one who would have to live there. “And it’s way cheaper than the hotel,” the singer added.
“I knew he was playing games. And I wasn’t the one,” said Dawn. “I’m like, come on, I’m trying to make this easier on you because financially, I know it’s got to be hard. You’re paying your rent and paying my hotel. Like, no.”
The Lucy Pearl frontwoman revealed that her manager’s apartment was $1,700 a month and her hotel was over $3,000. “And I was always stressed every week because he would pay weekly for the hotel so every week I was like ‘Oh my God can you afford it? Are you OK?’ and he’s like, ‘No, I can’t. But I’m getting it together,’” she confessed.
This eventually led Robinson to research “car life” and how to live in an automobile. She realized this was something she could accomplish, so she went to Malibu.
“It’s kind of the place where everybody stops along the way when they’re coming from the East Coast and heading west to California to make their dreams come true — to start a new life,” said Dawn.
Recalling her first night sleeping in her car, Robinson said, “I didn’t regret anything. I was just scared that night — that first night was scary. But then, as I got to know what to do in my car and how to do it, like how to cover my windows and you don’t talk to certain people and be careful of telling people that you’re alone as a woman especially. And I’m a celebrity. I don’t just divulge that to people. If you don’t know who I am, I’m not telling you that part.”
“I have a gym membership, and I shower there,” she said later on in the clip. “Yea, I’m a funky diva, but I’m not funky.”
Despite the circumstance, Robinson says she “felt free” and compared the experience to “a camping trip.” She also let fans know that they do not need to pity her.
“You guys, this is not like, ‘Oh my God, poor Dawn. She’s living in her car, and it’s terrible. Oh! Woe is me.’ It’s not that. Like I said, I’m learning about who I am and learning about myself as a person, as a woman.”
She later added, “When I succeed again — because I will — when I’m on top again or when I have a resurgence of my career again the way I want, getting to that point is only up to me. So from here, from my car into that life is going to be amazing. From this point and succeeding again is going to be amazing. I see it in my mind, I have known. Sometimes before I go to sleep I visualize seeing that.”
Support poured in as many fans sympathized with Robinson’s living situation.
“I’ve always loved you and EnVogue. That’s why it’s sad to see you like this,” one fan commented under Robinson’s video. “I know that you’re not sad, but this is NOT the American way. People should not have to live like this!”
Robinson was one of the four members of En Vogue from 1989 to 1997, along with founding members Terry Ellis, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones. She left abruptly in 1997 over unfair compensation that she felt she and her other group members were given while their label pocketed much more. She later went on to Dr. Dre’s Aftermath label, lending her vocals to a few tracks.
In 1999, Robinson joined Raphael Saddiq’s group Lucy Pearl alongside Saddiq and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Some reports claim she exited the group due to unequal pay, but she revealed in 2020 that she thought Saddiq was jealous over the attention she got in interviews.
“I think he got frustrated because he came off a little jaded and pissed off in interviews because people wanted to talk to me more,” she told Essence.
Robinson has tried different ways to revive her career, including reuniting with En Vogue and launching a solo career, but neither effort was successful. She also joined the cast of “R&B Divas: Los Angeles” in 2013 but ended up leaving that as well. Since then, her career hasn’t quite taken off again.
