It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...
Christmas, Reduced Services and Food and Housing Instability. Plus, we need a volunteer choir for our Christmas Eve Mass.
It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the Hotel Cecil—but it’s also beginning to look a lot like the reality many of our neighbors are facing right now: tighter budgets, reduced services, and growing uncertainty about what the months ahead will bring.
Still, in the middle of all that, something beautiful happened.
Christmas is in full swing at the Cecil. With deep gratitude to Immaculate Heart Community and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, we were able to distribute more than 100 gifts of much-needed supplies to residents—razors and shaving cream, skin care items, cosmetics, oral hygiene supplies, towels, and more. These aren’t luxuries. They’re dignity.
Thanks to three amazing donors, our Christmas tree is up and glowing. And none of this would have been possible without our incredible resident volunteers—Krisha, Keylon, and Mark W.—who gave their time, energy, and care to make the day what it was. Community doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people commit themselves to one another.
I also recently had a really meaningful conversation with Jenn Swann from KCRW, talking about my work at the Hotel Cecil and on Skid Row, and about how recent shifts in federal aid policy are already being felt on the ground. These aren’t abstract policy debates. They translate into fewer resources, more pressure on local programs, and harder choices for people who are already living with very little margin.
And yet—despite all of this—we are determined to make the holiday season bright for our residents.
Each year, on Christmas Eve at Noon, we gather at the Hotel Cecil for our annual Christmas Eve Mass. This year marks our fourth year celebrating Christmas in this way—right where people live, right in the middle of their lives. It has become a deeply meaningful tradition, rooted in presence, reverence, and care.
As part of the Mass, we distribute Christmas Eve gift bags filled with essentials—socks, hygiene supplies, and other practical items that help carry folks through the season. These are simple gifts, but they matter.
We would love a volunteer choir to help fill the space with music and warmth, and we could really use support in assembling those Christmas Eve gift bags. Our Amazon wish list is active, and every contribution—every item—directly supports this work.
Most of all, we need your continued support.
As funding priorities shift heading into 2026, community-based work like this becomes more fragile, not less necessary. The safety nets are thinning, and the work doesn’t slow down just because the dollars do. If this ministry—this steady presence, this insistence on dignity—matters to you, now is the moment to stand with us.
If you’re able, please consider supporting our work here:
https://donorbox.org/hope-healing-home
Christmas at the Cecil doesn’t look like glossy storefront windows or perfect tablescapes. It looks like towels folded with care, a lit tree in a shared space, a noon Mass on Christmas Eve, and neighbors taking responsibility for one another when the world feels uncertain. And with your help, it can keep looking like hope.