Rick Steves Saves Hygiene Center as Gift to Neighbors

The Lynnwood Hygiene Center, in a suburb north of Seattle, was slated to shut its doors on December 12, 2025. That is, until one of its community members stepped in to help. Travel writer and TV host Rick Steves pledged to keep the center open and free for people who need it as a resource for hot showers, food, and clothing in south Snohomish County (where the center is located). He did so by buying the building that houses it.

There are around 700 people experiencing homelessness who rely on the services that the center provides. Since 2020, the site was rented for free to the Jean Kim Foundation, which runs the Lynnwood Hygiene Center. In November 2025, however, the landowner said he had to sell it. The nonprofit’s director, Sandra Mears, tried everything she could think of to save the center, but nothing was working out. “I thought, ‘Not on my watch. We can’t lose this,’ ” she told The Seattle Times. “But I kept getting, ‘No.’ ”

Steves learned about the hygiene center’s closure on a local news website. He had never heard of it before that, but he felt compelled to act. The building is around the corner from his longtime church and adjacent to the Lynnwood Neighborhood Center, a community space he’s spent developing over the last 10 years, which opens in January 2026.

“It’s a gift to my homeless neighbors, a gift to the volunteers who get such joy out of helping out,” he said. “Why would I want that money just sitting in the bank when it could be helping these people?”

The $2.25 million sale was finalized on December 15, 2025. The goodbye party, which Mears had planned for December 12, was canceled and became a celebration on December 17, at which Steves was introduced as the anonymous donor who saved the center. “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 remarked while addressing the gathered crowd.

The publicity to the center and the incredible act of generosity brought additional donations from the community—a staggering $400,000, which the center is using to expand its services and renovate and repair the space.

Steves says this was the best $2.25 million he could’ve spent, but emphasized that private donations are not a substitute for public investment into essential services. “If we don’t have [$2.25 million] for a whole county to give homeless people a shower and a place to get out of the rain and a place to wash their clothes, what kind of society are we?”