In late March and early April 2026, a rumor spread on Facebook that late-night host Stephen Colbert and his wife, producer Evelyn McGee-Colbert, opened a free hospital for the homeless.
For example, one post from a Stephen Colbert fan page (archived) claimed the couple opened the hospital with "No fanfare. No ribbon cutting. Just doors opening at 5 a.m." The facility allegedly provides comprehensive medical services and 120 permanent apartments. The post also included an image purportedly showing the pair cutting a ribbon in front of the building. It read, in part:
Stephen Colbert stood beside his wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert, in the cool early morning air as they quietly unlocked the Colbert Sanctuary Medical Center — a 250-bed hospital providing completely free medical care, created to serve the homeless and the poor who often struggle to access healthcare.
The rumor and image spread elsewhere on Facebook (archived), with each post linking to advertisement-filled blog posts encouraging readers to follow the respective links for more information. Numerous Snopes readers also searched our site and emailed us asking if the claim is true.
In short, the story is fabricated. The text and image were created using artificial intelligence tools and were based on templates used for similar AI-generated stories of celebrities building free hospitals for the homeless. Therefore, we've rated this claim false.
Same claim, different celebrities
We first used Google to search for evidence of the story's truth using the searches "stephen colbert homeless hospital" and "100% Free Hospital for the Homeless." While we could find no credible news media outlets reporting on the Colberts opening a free hospital for the homeless — which would would have been newsworthy if the story were true, given Stephen Colbert's fame — the results did return similar claims about other celebrities that were shared on Facebook.
In the months prior to the rumor about the Colberts, various Facebook users posted similar stories about actors Kurt Russell, Barbara Streisand and Keanu Reeves, as well as singer P!nk, among others. The celebrities apparently opened their hospitals at 5 a.m. with no ribbon-cutting or fanfare. The images accompanying most of the posts look similar to each other, purportedly showing the figures cutting a ribbon in front of a statue of themselves and a building with their names on it.
With the exception of the P!nk post, readers could apparently find more on each celebrity's good deed by following a link to an advertisement-filled blog.
Creators of such content capitalize on social media users' willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
Proof of AI generation
In the case of the Colbert rumor, one of the linked blog posts duplicated parts of the text from the Facebook post, albeit replacing most uses of the letter "n" with the Cyrillic letter "п," which makes a sound akin to the English "p." This is an anti-crawling technique Snopes has previously reported on that is often used in AI-generated slop stories to make it difficult for Google and other services to index the blog post.
The other blog post also features the same "n" replacements, although it does so in an article that is entirely unrelated to the headline and the rumor about the Colberts. The text in that blog post is instead about Stephen Colbert, Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee.
The blogs and Facebook captions also contain emotionally charged language and short, punchy sentences that are consistent with other AI-generated stories.
Additionally, the image of Colbert and McGee-Colbert is AI-generated, as shown by the inconsistency of the blades. It also does not match the details in the text of the claim. For example, the text says the couple opened the hospital with "no fanfare" and "no ribbon cutting," whereas the image purportedly shows them cutting a ribbon in front of a statue and at least 10 people. Similarly, the text says the hospital is called "the Colbert Sanctuary Medical Center," whereas the sign on the building in the image reads, "The Stephen and Evelyn McGee-Colbert C," with the hidden text behind the statue's head likely spelling out "Center."
The fictional story about the Colberts opening a free hospital for the homeless resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as "stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental."
Snopes has debunked similar rumors before. For example, in February 2026, we traced the source of a false story about Melania and Barron Trump opening a free hospital for homeless people that spread via similar methods.