Rick Steves taking a selfie with neighborhood members exterior the Lynnwood Hygiene Middle close to Seattle. He says his buy of the property secures the way forward for the middle, which supplies scorching meals and scorching showers.
Rick Steves
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Rick Steves
An nameless donor stepped in final month to avoid wasting a Seattle-area neighborhood heart that was slated to shut.
Final week, neighborhood members discovered that the brand new proprietor was journey author and TV host Rick Steves, who pledged to maintain it open and free for individuals needing scorching showers and scorching meals.
“I vividly keep in mind what it is like as a child backpacking world wide to wish a bathe, to wish a spot to scrub your garments,” Steves advised a crowd who gathered on Wednesday to have fun the acquisition over cake and with phrases fait accompli written in purple icing.
Many homeless individuals had come to depend upon the Lynnwood Hygiene Middle, which had operated rent-free on the property since 2020.
However the heart mentioned in November that it will shut after the property was offered to a developer.
Steves mentioned he discovered in regards to the hygiene heart’s impending closure by studying about it in a native on-line newspaper — simply weeks earlier than it was set to close down.
Regardless of residing close by, he mentioned he hadn’t even recognized the middle existed.
In reality, Steves advised NPR he did not even know what a hygiene heart was till he learn in regards to the closure — a spot the place individuals can bathe, wash garments, seize a scorching meal and spend a couple of hours indoors.
“I spotted, oh my goodness, there’s an invisible neighborhood with an invisible heart serving to invisible individuals. And it isn’t proper. It must be saved alive,” Steves mentioned.
In a sequence of posts on Bluesky, Steves mentioned was struck by how troublesome it will be to switch.
Steves mentioned he purchased the property for $2.25 million.
Members of the neighborhood pitched in one other $400,000 in donations, which the middle says will go towards renovations and increasing companies.
“It is enormous,” mentioned Sandra Mears, govt director of the Jean Kim Basis, which runs the hygiene heart.
Mears says earlier than Steves got here in, she had been advised to plan a goodbye get together.
“I did not desire a goodbye get together,” she mentioned.
Due to the donations, Mears says the Lynnwood Hygiene Middle will proceed serving round 700 individuals locally, offering upwards of 16,000 scorching meals and 10,000 showers a 12 months.
Steves referred to as the acquisition the perfect $2.25 million he may think about spending.
However he says non-public donations are additionally not an alternative choice to public funding — and should not decide whether or not important companies survive.
He describes his choice as a response to what he sees as a failure of public priorities, not a mannequin to be relied upon.
“If we do not have [$2.25 million] for an entire county to provide homeless individuals a bathe and a spot to get out of the rain and a spot to scrub their garments, what sort of society are we?” Steves mentioned.
