Travel writer and TV host Rick Steves was catching up on local news last month from his home in Edmonds, Washington, when a story caught his attention.
A community hygiene center — the only one in South Snohomish County — was slated to close in a matter of weeks after the landowner announced plans to sell. The Lynnwood Hygiene Center was two blocks from his church, but Steves said he never realized it was there.
As Steves read about the facility on the My Edmonds News website, he learned that the center provided an average of 700 showers each month to people in need. It also provided people with meals and clothing and had a bimonthly mobile medical clinic, among other services.
Closing the facility could leave hundreds “without this one little place where they can go to get a shower and wash their clothes and fix their bikes and have a little community,” Steves said Tuesday.
Teresa Wippel, the president and CEO of the My Neighborhood News Group nonprofit that runs My Edmonds News, said Steves contacted Angelica Relente, the housing reporter who wrote the story. He also contacted the Jean Kim Foundation, which runs the center.
Within a few weeks, Wippel said, they learned that a donor had bought the property for the hygiene center. On Saturday, Steves said in a social media post that he had purchased it.
“I really take ‘love your neighbor’ seriously,” Steves said to The Washington Post. He bought the property for $2.25 million, he added.
Steves, who rose to prominence with his travel guides and “Rick Steves’ Europe” series on PBS, said his worldview has been shaped by spending a third of his life overseas and observing the ways other countries approach issues such as homelessness and social services compared with how the United States does.
“I vividly remember what it’s like as a kid backpacking around the world to need a shower,” Steves said at an event last week announcing the purchase. “This is a place that gives countless people that are down and out a shower.”
Before Steves bought the Lynnwood Hygiene Center property, Sandra Mears, its executive director, was growing despondent over its pending closure. She was having trouble sleeping and was experiencing tension headaches at the thought of people losing access to the center.
The Jean Kim Foundation, the local housing-focused nonprofit that ran the center, had a rent-free agreement to use the land. When Mears learned it would be listed for sale in January, she was overwhelmed by the thought of packing up the supplies and opening a center elsewhere.
“We never thought about buying [the land] — that was not even feasible,” Mears said.
She raced to find alternatives, calling motels to ask if the group could lease a few rooms for several months so unhoused residents could continue to have access to hot showers. She also courted local donors, hoping they might help.
One by one, Mears crossed potential donors off the list. Then on a recent Saturday, she received an email from Steves.
“I was getting all these ‘nos’ and I thought, ‘Well, who’s this character?’” Mears said. Rick Steves? Mears had never heard of him.
Steves’s offer to purchase the property moved quickly. Mears was able to cancel the goodbye party she had been asked to plan for the center and replace it with a happier theme.
Steves said his decision to buy the center became a “joyful time.”
“Big changes can happen quickly when you decide to act,” Steves said. “This [center] was going to shut down. It would be vacated right now. It would empty for this Christmas.”
Aside from Steves purchasing the land and facility, an anonymous donor pitched in $250,000 to help with renovations and expansions. Steves hopes to see the center add more showers, laundry facilities and a community room where people can congregate.
On Facebook, Steves called the purchase “the best $2 million I can imagine spending,” adding that it aligns with a notion he calls “vicarious consumption,” explaining that he experiences more joy by spending his money helping others rather than on himself.
“I recognize you get a diminishing curve of returns the more you consume,” Steves said.
In the weeks since the purchase, Steves has been spending time at the Lynnwood Hygiene Center getting to know the neighbors who rely on it. And while he’s happy to have helped, he doesn’t want private donations to replace what he sees as a government responsibility to help those in need.
“You could put all the charities together, all the nice guys like me together,” Steves said. “And it is a pittance compared to what our president can do with the stroke of his Sharpie.”
He encourages people to look for ways to make changes for the good of not only their communities, but also far beyond.
“Love thy neighbor has nothing to do with proximity,” Steves said. “That’s a lesson I’ve learned as a traveler.”
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