Rick Steves taking a selfie with community members outside the Lynnwood Hygiene Center near Seattle. He says his purchase of the property secures the future of the center, which provides hot meals and hot showers.
Rick Steves
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Rick Steves
An anonymous donor stepped in last month to save a Seattle-area community center that was slated to close.
Last week, community members learned that the new owner was travel writer and TV host Rick Steves, who pledged to keep it open and free for people needing hot showers and hot meals.
“I vividly remember what it’s like as a kid backpacking around the world to need a shower, to need a place to wash your clothes,” Steves told a crowd who gathered on Wednesday to celebrate the purchase over cake and with words fait accompli written in red icing.
Many homeless people had come to depend on the Lynnwood Hygiene Center, which had operated rent-free on the property since 2020.
But the center said in November that it would close after the property was sold to a developer.
Steves said he learned about the hygiene center’s impending closure by reading about it in a local online newspaper — just weeks before it was set to shut down.
Despite living nearby, he said he hadn’t even known the center existed.
In fact, Steves told NPR he didn’t even know what a hygiene center was until he read about the closure — a place where people can shower, wash clothes, grab a hot meal and spend a few hours indoors.
“I realized, oh my goodness, there’s an invisible community with an invisible center helping invisible people. And it’s not right.
Keeping it alive is crucial,” Steves emphasized.
In a series of posts on Bluesky, Steves expressed his concern about the difficulty of replacing it.
Steves revealed that he purchased the property for $2.25 million.
Community members also contributed $400,000 in donations, which will be used for renovations and expanding services, according to the center.
“It’s a significant contribution,” stated Sandra Mears, the executive director of the Jean Kim Foundation, which manages the hygiene center.
Mears recalled being advised to organize a farewell event before Steves stepped in.
“I didn’t want to say goodbye,” she expressed.
Thanks to the donations, Mears mentioned that the Lynnwood Hygiene Center will be able to continue serving approximately 700 individuals in the community, offering over 16,000 hot meals and 10,000 showers annually.
Steves referred to the purchase as the most fulfilling $2.25 million he could have spent.
However, he emphasized that private donations should not be a substitute for public investment and should not determine the survival of essential services.
He described his decision as a reaction to what he perceives as a failure of public priorities, rather than a model to depend on.
“If we can’t allocate [$2.25 million] for an entire county to provide homeless individuals with a shower, a place to seek shelter from the rain, and a place to wash their clothes, what kind of society are we?” Steves questioned.
