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 TV host Rick Steves, who pledged to keep it open and free for people needing hot showers and hot meals.
"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 told a crowd who gathered on Wednesday to celebrate the purchase over cake and with words fait accompli written in red icing.
Many homeless people had come to depend on the Lynnwood Hygiene Center, which had operated rent-free on the property since 2020.
But the center said in November that it would close after the property was sold to a developer.
Steves said he learned about the hygiene center's impending closure by reading about it in a local online newspaper — just weeks before it was set to shut down.
Despite living nearby, he said he hadn't even known the center existed.
In fact, Steves told NPR he didn't even know what a hygiene center was until he read about the closure — a place where people can shower, wash clothes, grab a hot meal and spend a few hours indoors.
"I realized, oh my goodness, there's an invisible community with an invisible center helping invisible people. And it's not right. It needs to be kept alive," Steves said.
In a series of posts on Bluesky, Steves said was struck by how difficult it would be to replace.
Steves said he bought the property for $2.25 million.
Members of the community pitched in another $400,000 in donations, which the center says will go toward renovations and expanding services.
"It's huge," said Sandra Mears, executive director of the Jean Kim Foundation, which runs the hygiene center.
Mears says before Steves came in, she had been told to plan a goodbye party.
"I didn't want a goodbye party," she said.
Thanks to the donations, Mears says the Lynnwood Hygiene Center will continue serving around 700 people in the community, providing upwards of 16,000 hot meals and 10,000 showers a year.
Steves called the purchase the best $2.25 million he could imagine spending.
But he says private donations are also not a substitute for public investment — and shouldn't determine whether essential services survive.
He describes his decision as a response to what he sees as a failure of public priorities, not a model to be relied upon.
"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?" Steves said.
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