That represented an extraordinary reversal.
Only months earlier, people were preparing for the facility to disappear.
Now they were discussing how to make it better.
The City of Lynnwood has also been involved in discussions about the center's future and its relationship with the surrounding neighborhood.
According to a February 2026 report by My Lynnwood News, city officials and the Jean Kim Foundation were working through concerns and next steps, and approximately 87 percent of the people using the hygiene center were described as local.
The city's mayor later said plans were being developed to remodel and expand the facility while also creating policies intended to address the needs of nearby residents, businesses and unhoused people.
This is an important part of the story because community services do not operate in isolation.
A hygiene center exists within a neighborhood.
Its long-term success depends not only on money but also on management, relationships, public policy and cooperation among different groups.
Buying the property secured the center's physical future.
Making it work successfully for years to come requires continued effort.
The Travel Writer Who Looked Close to Home
There is an interesting symmetry to Steves' involvement.
His career was built on travel.
For decades, he has encouraged people to leave their familiar surroundings and look carefully at how people live elsewhere.
Travel, in his philosophy, is not merely about checking landmarks off a list.
It can be a way of seeing society differently.
Steves told The Washington Post that spending a large portion of his life overseas had influenced how he thinks about issues such as homelessness and social services in the United States.
But this time, he didn't have to travel across an ocean to encounter a different reality.
It existed near his own home.
The people who depended on the Lynnwood Hygiene Center were neighbors.
He simply hadn't known the center existed until he read about it.
That realization is perhaps one of the most powerful elements of the story.
Communities contain many lives that remain invisible to people who are financially secure.
A person can drive the same roads every day without knowing where people without housing shower.
They can pass the same buildings without knowing which one provides dinner.
They can live only minutes away from a service used by hundreds of vulnerable people without ever realizing it is there.
Steves happened to read the right story.
Then he had the financial ability to act.
"The Best $2.25 Million"
Steves later described the purchase as "the best two-and-a-quarter million dollars I could imagine spending."
It is a striking statement.
For most people, $2.25 million is an unimaginable amount of money.
For Steves, the value of the purchase was not in what the property could generate financially.
Its value was in what would continue happening inside it.
People would keep showering.
Washing their clothes.
Eating meals.
Receiving basic assistance.
Finding shelter from the weather for a while.
The return on the investment was measured differently.
Not in profit.
In usefulness.
Charity Is Not the Whole Answer
Steves also made an important point that can easily be lost in an inspirational version of this story.
He did not present his donation as evidence that wealthy individuals should be responsible for solving homelessness.
In fact, he argued the opposite.
Speaking to NPR, Steves questioned what it said about society if an entire county could not provide enough resources for people experiencing homelessness to have basic access to showers, laundry and shelter from the rain.