In this paper, we consider the problem $-\Delta u =-u^{-\beta }\chi _{\{u>0\}} + f(u)$ in $\Omega$ with $u=0$ on $\partial \Omega$, where $0<\beta <1$ and $\Omega$ is a smooth bounded domain in $\mathbb {R}^{N}$, $N\geq 2$. We are able to solve this problem provided $f$ has subcritical growth and satisfy certain hypothesis. We also consider this problem with $f(s)=\lambda s+s^{\frac {N+2}{N-2}}$ and $N\geq 3$. In this case, we are able to obtain a solution for large values of $\lambda$. We replace the singular function $u^{-\beta }$ by a function $g_\epsilon (u)$ which pointwisely converges to $u^{-\beta }$ as $\epsilon \rightarrow 0$. The corresponding energy functional to the perturbed equation $-\Delta u + g_\epsilon (u) = f(u)$ has a critical point $u_\epsilon$ in $H_0^{1}(\Omega )$, which converges to a non-trivial non-negative solution of the original problem as $\epsilon \rightarrow 0$.