A heartfelt conversation with Surfing Sofas, aka Justin, reveals how his journey through homelessness inspired him to write and perform spoken word poetry, including a bespoke poem for EveryYouth.
Through his talent, Justin now advocates for change, working with the likes of Museum for Homelessness, Arts and Homelessness International. We sat down with Justin as he releases his latest poem for EveryYouth, Not Just One, to mark World Homeless Day on Friday, October 10.
EveryYouth: What inspired you to write this poem for us? Do you have any favourite lines from the poem?
Justin: “Learning more about your work and hearing testimonials from people that have experienced help from EveryYouth…it sparked the idea to write a poem to let people who follow my journey, who might not know about EveryYouth, know about the work that you’re doing.
“There’s a part in the poem where I speak about how EveryYouth is there to help young people. I reinforced it with the lines ‘not just one youth, or just any youth, or just some youth, but all and EveryYouth‘. That was my favourite part of the poem.”
EveryYouth: What do you hope people take away when they hear your words?
Justin: “I hope that people are able to learn things about homelessness…without the stigmas that have been perpetuated through stereotypes over the decades, and be able to look at homelessness with a new lens that really shows it’s not the individual who has a problem.”
EveryYouth: What are you most hopeful for or excited about for the future?
Justin believes that “it’s the system that we live in that has a problem” but remains hopeful that recent Housing First models (Centre for Social Justice, 2025) appear to be having success.
He says Finland has done “an amazing job of eradicating homelessness or getting it down to next to nothing”. He would like to see the UK replicate Finland’s model to stop people falling into the trap of homelessness.
“I’d love to see young people get out straight away. As soon as it’s apparent that they have no safe space to live, just get them housed. Why are we leaving them to go through the traumas that come with homelessness?”
EveryYouth: How has your journey helped you give back to others?
Justin: “My journey has inspired me and put me in positions to help people in a few ways. I facilitate creative workshops, mostly for people who have lived experience of homelessness…that’s kind of my focus. I’ve found from doing that there’s a lot of creative people out there…that I try to showcase.”
He explained: “I didn’t really know anything about homelessness. I used to see people in the streets and if I had change then I’d spare it, but I feel like I never knew about all the layers there were until 2013, when I ended up running out of sofas to surf on. I ended up staying in a winter night shelter and I met a bunch of people…who were experiencing homelessness for all different reasons.”
It was this experience where Justin found that “homelessness is actually more than people on the streets”. He explained that it opened his eyes to the scope and spectrum of homelessness.
“Therapy is expensive and the waiting lists are long so I feel like poetry has been a great alternative…a lot of the answers that we have in life, not all of them, but I feel like a lot of them are sometimes inside of us.”
“Being able to get something down on a page or a document is therapeutic. There’ll be questions that I don’t have the answer to and it’ll be bothering me. I’ll be writing about the scenario and then the answer comes.”
Since Justin was seven years old he was fascinated by how a book called ‘Curtis the Hip-Hop Cat’ rhymed. He read it over and over again until he realised that he had memorised it. His love for writing continued when he recorded a rap verse with his older cousin on a karaoke machine.
“People were impressed…I used to ask my cousin to write me another one and she would never do it,” he said.
Justin then started writing himself: “I saw that people liked the stuff that I was putting together and feel like the rest is pretty much history.”
EveryYouth: Who or what has made the biggest difference in your journey?
Justin: “I have to give credit to the artist, David Tovey, because he helped me segue into the leadership programme…he’s been like a mentor to myself.”
A charity called Arts and Homelessness International helped Justin evolve as an artist and a person navigating the homelessness sector.
“I would say they’ve played the biggest part in my journey so far,” he says.
From 2022 – 23, Justin has been on their leadership programme. “I picked up a lot of cool stuff. I’ve been able to put [those skills] to use in this journey of being a poet that I am now.
“I don’t share all of my work, but ones that I think will resonate with other people or resonate with things they’re going through.”
EveryYouth: What’s your advice for young people facing homelessness?
Young people’s voices are at the heart of EveryYouth. We wanted to get Justin’s thoughts on how important it is for young people with lived experience to share their story.
He said: “I feel like it’s important for them to share if they want to because of two reasons. One, it might be good for [young people] to get some of their feelings and emotions that they have inside, out. And also, there’s a lot to learn from people’s lived experience…I feel like when you have lived experience, it makes you a special kind of expert because you know what things are like from first-hand experience. You know stuff that textbooks and lectures can’t really teach you.”
When asking his advice for young people he came up with a few suggestions:
