Rick Steves’ gift saves Lynnwood center for ‘my homeless neighbors’

Sandra Mears refused to believe the Lynnwood Hygiene Center would close, even as she planned its goodbye party.

Around 700 unsheltered people in south Snohomish County relied on the center for hot showers, meals and a safe place to rest. But last month, after five years of renting the site for free to the Jean Kim Foundation, the landowner said he had to sell.

The center announced its Dec. 12 closure in early November while Mears, the nonprofit’s director, launched “a Hail Mary effort” to save it. She frantically searched for new host sites or funding to pay rent elsewhere, developing tension headaches and struggling to get out of bed.

“I thought, ‘Not on my watch. We can’t lose this,’ ” she said. “But I kept getting, ‘No.’ ”

Meanwhile, about 1,100 miles away on a scorching Arizona sidewalk, an unexpected benefactor was preparing to answer Mears’ prayers: famed travel author and TV host Rick Steves, whose tour and guidebook company is based in Edmonds.

The next four weeks brought a whirlwind of emails, calls and emergency “plan Bs,” ending Dec. 15 when Steves bought the property for $2.25 million. His purchase, along with a windfall of recent donations, have ensured the hygiene center will not only stay open, but expand its services.

“It really has not set in yet,” Mears said by phone Monday. “It’s so surreal.”

Steves, who didn’t know what a hygiene center was before last month, called his purchase “the most beautiful Christmas present (he) could have.”

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

Hygiene Center becomes a lifeline

The Lynnwood Hygiene Center opened in 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a local landowner offered to lease the space for free to the Jean Kim Foundation.

The center, which took over a former auto emissions testing facility space, was equipped with two showers and several bathrooms, and was meant to be temporary. But its doors off 64th Avenue West stayed open year after year, offering a growing number of resources.

The center’s lone washer and dryer whirred almost nonstop to clean towels for the roughly 40 people who showered there daily between Monday and Sunday, Mears said. Meanwhile, volunteers cooked and served up to 60 hot meals per day and distributed donations of new underwear, socks and hygiene supplies.

A mobile medical clinic by Everett nonprofit MercyWatch provided wound care at the center every other week, while case managers and state social services workers helped connect people to housing and federal benefits, Mears said.

It quickly became clear to Mears, who was hired in 2021, that there was a serious public health issue happening in Snohomish County. Most of those who came to the center lived outside or at encampments, and often they arrived with wounds from ill-fitting shoes, bites, cuts or burns from fires they lit to stay warm or cook food. Without access to running water or medical care, those wounds could all lead to infection or illness, Mears said.

More than just a safe place to warm up or escape the rain, the center has been “a lifeline” to many who felt a sense of community and belonging within its walls, Mears said.

“It’s a place they go where they’re seen, where they see their friends,” she said. “People who are looking out for them — it’s human dignity.”

Faced early last month with the center’s closure, Mears felt terrified for those who relied on its services. There is nowhere else to get a free shower in Lynnwood. People would have to travel 15 miles or more to get similar services in Everett or Seattle — a major hurdle for those with limited mobility or without a car or bus fare, she said.

Rescue was ‘meant to be’

Steves was in Phoenix on Nov. 10 when he checked a hometown news website, My Edmonds News, and saw a story about the center’s impending closure. He recognized the building, where he remembered taking his car to get its emissions checked.

The area around the center was also deeply familiar, Steves said. The building is around the corner from his longtime Lutheran church and the adjacent Lynnwood Neighborhood Center, a 40,000-square-foot community space he’s spent the last decade helping develop and that opens next month.

Steves said he hadn’t heard of a hygiene center before that day — let alone that hundreds of people in his community had relied on one for the past five years. And as he thought about the fates of the “invisible people” whose lives would be affected by the center’s closure, the idea to rescue it quickly took shape.

“It’s right here in my community,” Steves said. “It’s like it was meant to be.”

Within three days, Steves got in touch with Mears, and then the landowner, and started negotiating to buy the property. Meanwhile, donations continued pouring in from community members who had heard of the center’s impending closure.

Mears was still in disbelief when Steves finalized the sale Dec. 15. She canceled the center’s goodbye party and announced a different celebration on Dec. 17, where Steves was introduced as the anonymous donor responsible for keeping their doors open.

Things at the center have already started improving, Mears said.

For five years, necessary repairs were usually done in a “patch job” of duct tape. But when their refrigerator gave out last week and almost started an electrical fire, Mears said they had enough funding left to buy and get a new one delivered — a purchase they wouldn’t have considered weeks ago.

The biggest change, however, is among the people who visit the center, Mears said. Not many had dared to hope for the center to remain open, accustomed to loss after years or sometimes lifetimes of trauma. Steves’ investment in the center, and the people who rely on it, “means something.”

“It says, ‘They are valued. People out there care about us,’ ” Mears said. “That means a lot.”

For Steves, the purchase was a gift, but also a way to protest the “insatiable greed” behind the homelessness crisis in the U.S. Communities should not have to rely on the whims of wealthy people to have their essential needs met, he said. Instead, Steves said smartly invested tax revenue should fund services that keep vulnerable people healthy and safe.

Steves is already planning improvements for the “tin can of a building,” like repairing its heating system, installing new showers and buying industrial strength washing machines so people can do their laundry for free. He hopes to open a bike repair at the center, extend its hours and use it as a cold weather shelter during winter months, he said.

“I wanted to make a difference. I had this opportunity to walk the talk and love my neighbor,” Steves said. “Everybody can pitch in, but we have to inspire people to roll up their sleeves and get involved.”