[9] A 2023 Los Angeles Times article described and photographed the run-down conditions inside the Hotel Cecil, which included black mold and vermin infestations, water leakages, graffiti, vandalism, and unsanitary communal amenities.

Many of its low-income residents, including former Skid Row homeless, require ongoing medical, mental health and substance abuse treatment.

The three hoteliers invested about $2.5 million[16] in the enterprise, with the knowledge that several similar hotels had been established elsewhere downtown, but within five years of its opening, the United States sank into the Great Depression.

[17] In 2011, part of the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as "Stay on Main",[19] with separate reception areas during the day, but with shared facilities[20] and its official website remained thececilhotel.com.

In 2014, the hotel was sold to New York City hotelier Richard Born for $30 million,[21] after which another New York-based firm, Simon Baron Development, acquired a 99-year ground lease on the property.

[23][24][4][7][8] In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deem the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument, because it is representative of an early 20th-century American hotel and because of the historic significance of its architect's body of work.

[30] In 1964, a retired telephone operator named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood who had been a well-known and well-liked long-term resident at the hotel was found dead in her room.

Jacques B. Ehlinger was charged with Osgood's murder because he was seen covered in blood roaming the streets close to the hotel, but was later cleared as a suspect.

[34] On August 30, 1985, a group of Los Angeles residents spotted him in the street and prevented him from escaping until police arrived to arrest him.

In 2013, the Cecil (by then re-branded as the "Stay on Main" although still maintaining the original Hotel Cecil signs and painted advertisements on its exterior) became the focus of renewed attention when surveillance footage of a young Canadian student, Elisa Lam, behaving erratically in the hotel's elevator, was disseminated widely in international media.

Lam had previously been diagnosed with an extreme form of bipolar disorder and was known for displaying similar psychotic behaviour in the past, also claimed by her friends to act strange at times when her medications were not taken.

The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled her death accidental due to drowning, with bipolar disorder being a significant factor.