When the owners of the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles announced plans to reopen the building as homeless housing back in 2021, the move was celebrated for giving new purpose to a storied piece of Skid Row real estate.
Years later, some formerly unhoused residents wonder if they were better off before moving into the Cecil.
This week, a group of tenants gathered outside the building and marched to L.A. City Hall, where they gave public comment during Tuesday’s City Council meeting about the issues they’re facing.
Walking through downtown with her neighbors and clutching a sign that read “Fix Cecil,” resident Norma Castillo described her sense of confinement when the building’s elevators are down, which is a frequent problem.
“I'm starting to get depressed because I'm not outside,” Castillo said. She can only go downstairs and make the exhausting climb back up to her small 10th floor unit once a day, she said. “I’m just indoors.”
Tenants complain of pests and frequent outbursts
Castillo said during her nearly two years of living at the Cecil, she has seen it plagued with many problems. Outbursts from residents living with untreated addiction or mental health issues are a regular occurrence, she said.
“There are altercations so loud that they wake me up at two or three o'clock in the morning,” Castillo said. “There's drug trafficking in the hallways. The hallways are always dirty with trash. And we are infested with roaches.”
One elevator was fixed last week, said Deena Eberly, the Cecil’s property manager. But she said it didn’t take long before a tenant, acting erratically, entered the elevator and destroyed its panel of buttons, putting it briefly out of service again.
“I'm used to tough buildings, but this is a different beast,” Eberly said. “I want to see this building succeed so badly. It's just at a point where a private individual with a private loan can't do this. Our security alone is almost $18,000 a week.”
The Cecil’s infamous backstory
Matthew Baron, managing partner for the company that owns the Cecil, originally intended to turn the property into a hotel. He shifted strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of a hotel, Baron adopted a new business model built on renting out the building’s 600 units to Angelenos using housing vouchers and other supports to exit homelessness.
It was a stunning transformation for a building perhaps best known for its connection with grisly crimes and mysterious deaths. Infamous people who reportedly stayed at the Cecil Hotel include serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger. It was also the site of the 2013 death of tourist Elisa Lam, whose body was found in the building’s water tank.
The Cecil contains hundreds of small private bedrooms, with most tenants sharing bathroom and kitchen facilities. This type of single-room-occupancy building was common in the early history of Downtown L.A. Today, these properties tend to house some of the city’s poorest residents, making them challenging to operate financially.
When the Cecil first reopened, property management was handled by the Skid Row Housing Trust, a nonprofit that faced a financial crisis so severe that a court-appointed receiver had to take control of its portfolio last year.
Why it’s a struggle to support the building financially
Today, close to half of the Cecil’s units remain vacant and the property continues to struggle with balancing its books, Eberly said. She hopes the city of L.A. or a homelessness nonprofit will step up to master lease some or all of the units. That approach, she said, would help house people faster and give the Cecil a much-needed steady revenue stream.
Until such a deal materializes, Eberly said, the ground lease for the Cecil will remain up for sale.
“It's for sale because we can't support it financially anymore,” she said. “We're just at the end of our rope.”
Clara Karger, a spokesperson for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, told LAist the mayor’s office is coordinating with various city and county agencies in an effort to help Cecil tenants and prevent them from falling back into homelessness.
“The housing department is also assessing the condition of the Cecil to determine the necessary repairs,” Karger said via email. “We are looking at options and prioritizing resident wellbeing and safety.”
Officials with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said they have no plans for a master lease agreement at the Cecil.
From the Cecil to city hall
Tuesday’s march to L.A. City Hall was organized in part by Rev. Dylan Littlefield, who serves as a volunteer on-site chaplain at the Cecil. He said tenants come to him to talk about problems they feel they can’t discuss with anyone else.
“A lot of people who are experiencing homelessness, who are recently sheltered, they're dealing with a lot of trauma,” Littlefield said. “It feels bad when I have tenants saying, ‘I wonder if I was better off living in a tent.’”
Tenants say they’ve looked for other housing, but can’t afford L.A.’s high rents or obtain a Section 8 voucher that would allow them to move.
Some can’t help but compare the Cecil, which they describe as squalid, to the state-of-the-art Weingart Tower, a 278-unit permanent supportive housing high-rise that recently opened a few blocks away. The publicly funded project cost about $600,000 per unit to build and features a gym, an art room, a computer library and a floor for case managers.
Eberly said the Cecil has nowhere near the same amount of financial support.
“This is just like an apartment building you or I would live in,” she said. “This isn't like Weingart supportive housing. This is not that.”
Mental health services planned
The Cecil’s current on-site property managers are not just handling leasing, rent collection and maintenance requests, Eberly said. They’re also holding monthly classes for tenants focused on readjusting to life indoors and cooking meals for tenants once a week.
Eberly said the Cecil has contracted with a nonprofit health agency to run an on-site clinic staffed by trained mental health professionals, but those services won’t be up and running for another month or so.
Krisha Scales said she moved into the Cecil last September using a voucher to help cover her $1,050 monthly rent for up to two years. She said she’s looking for other long-term housing options — ones where she doesn’t feel the need to stay confined to her room.
“I kind of thought this was going to be a good place for me to, you know, start over,” Scales said. “Maybe instead of putting us in dilapidated places they can put us in better places.”
