Rick Steves steps in to save Seattle-area hygiene center : NPR

Rick Steves takes 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 offers 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 television host Rick Steves, who is committed to keeping it open and free for people in need of hot showers and hot meals.

“I remember very well what it was like to be a kid backpacking the world and needing a shower, a place to wash your clothes,” Steves told a crowd gathered Wednesday to celebrate the purchase with cake and words. accomplished fact written in red icing.

Many homeless people have come to rely on the Lynnwood Hygiene Center, which has operated on the property for free since 2020.

But the center announced in November that it would close after selling the property to a developer.

Steves said he learned of the hygiene center’s impending closure when he read an article in a local newspaper online, just weeks before it was scheduled to close.

Although he lives nearby, he said he didn’t even know the center existed.

In fact, Steves told NPR he didn’t even know what a hygiene center was. was until he heard about the closure – a place where people could shower, wash their clothes, have a hot meal and spend a few hours indoors.

“I realized, oh my God, there is an invisible community with an invisible center that helps invisible people. And that’s not right. It needs to stay alive,” Steves said.

In a series of posts on Bluesky, Steves said he was struck by how difficult it was to replace him.

Steves said he purchased the property for $2.25 million.

Community members donated an additional $400,000, which the center said will go toward renovations and expansion of services.

“It’s huge,” said Sandra Mears, executive director of the Jean Kim Foundation, which runs the hygiene center.

Mears says that before Steves arrived, he was told to have a farewell party.

“I didn’t want a farewell party,” she said.

Through the donations, Mears says the Lynnwood Hygiene Center will continue to serve approximately 700 people in the community, providing more than 16,000 hot meals and 10,000 showers annually.

Steves called the purchase the best $2.25 million he could imagine spending.

But he says private donations are also no substitute for public investment and should not determine the survival of essential services.

He describes his decision as a response to what he sees as a failure of public priorities, not as a model to build on.

“If we don’t have [$2.25 million] “For an entire county to give homeless people a shower, a place to get out of the rain and a place to wash their clothes, what kind of society are we?,” Steves said.