Did Patti Labelle, Novak Djokovic, Cardi B, James Hetfield, Morgan Wallen or a long list of other celebrities just open "America's first 100% free homeless hospital" because they wanted to leave a legacy behind? No, that's not true: Viral posts on Facebook were the latest variations of the same made-up story being spread by foreign clickbait accounts mostly run from Vietnam. There were no actual news reports about such a hospital being opened and details in the story are verifiably not real.
The version with Patti Labelle appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published by a page named "Christina Vargas" on December 11, 2025. It read:
PATTI LABELLE JUST OPENED AMERICA'S FIRST 100% FREE HOMELESS HOSPITAL - "THIS IS THE LEGACY I WANT TO LEAVE BEHIND"
No fanfare. No ribbon cutting. Just open doors at 5 a.m.
Patti LaBelle, 81, stood in the chill of dawn and unlocked the LaBelle Sanctuary Medical Center, a 250-bed, zero-cost hospital built exclusively for America's homeless - the first of its kind in U.S. history.
Cancer wards. Trauma ORs. Mental health wings. Addiction detox. Dental suites. 120 permanent apartments on the upper floors.
Everything free, forever.
$142 million raised in secret over 18 months, entirely from LaBelle's personal foundation and bipartisan donors who begged to remain anonymous.
First patient: a 61-year-old Navy vet named Thomas, who hadn't seen a doctor in 14 years.
LaBelle carried his bag inside herself, knelt down, and said:
"This hospital bears my name because I know what it's like to feel invisible. Here, nobody is. This is the legacy I want to leave behind when I'm gone - not high notes, not the spotlight, just lives saved."
By noon, the line wrapped around six city blocks.
#LaBelleSanctuary detonated X with 38.7 billion impressions in eight hours - the fastest humanitarian trend ever recorded.
From the "Godmother of Soul" to miracle-maker, Patti LaBelle didn't just build a hospital.
She built hope, one free bed at a time.
America's heart just found a new home.
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Dec 13 15:52:37 2025 UTC)
At least one detail in the story does not check out: the hashtag #LaBelleSanctuary did not "detonate" on X, as of this writing it has never been used according to X's search page (archived here).
A search for the phrase "AMERICA'S FIRST 100% FREE HOMELESS HOSPITAL" on Facebook brought up several other, quasi-identical stories (archived here) about different celebrities, including Kelly Clarkson, Jimmy Page, Barbra Streisand, Cardi B., James Hetfield, Bob Seger, Novak Djokovic, Kane Brown, Morgan Wallen, Joan Baez, Johnny Matis, Neil Young, David Coverdale, Jennifer Huson, Dwight Yoakam, Blake Shelton, Robert DeNiro, Paul McCartney, Alfonso Ribeiro, Randy Owen, P!nk, Snoop Dogg, Itzhak Perlman, Paul Stanley and Pete Hegseth.
Nearly all of them used AI generated images showing the celebrity cutting a ribbon, often with a statue of the celebrity in the background and their name emblazoned on the hospital building:
(Image source: screenshot of search results for "AMERICA'S FIRST 100% FREE HOMELESS HOSPITAL" on Facebook)
A Google News search for news stories mentioning the phrase "100% free homeless hospital" only returned one result at the time of writing (archived here), our own fact check: a few weeks ago, Lead Stories investigated a nearly identical story about Pete Buttigieg and found it had originated from a page being run from Vietnam.
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asia country. We have published at least 60 fact check articles focused on this content.
Lead Stories has published a primer -- or a prebunk -- on how to identify these kinds of fake posts exported from Vietnam. It's titled Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'
