Rick Steves' Recent $2.25 Million Purchase Might Surprise You

You might know Rick Steves as the cheerful traveler who can recite encyclopedic knowledge of a foreign city for a PBS television program or warn you through his guidebooks and travel website about the tourist traps in Europe. But Steves isn't always on the move. In fact, he has a home in Edmonds, Washington, in the Seattle area. And when Steves learned that a facility used to provide an average of 700 showers a month for people experiencing homelessness in neighboring Lynnwood was in danger of closing, he decided to buy it. In November 2025, Steves reportedly paid $2.25 million for the Lynnwood Hygiene Center. Just a few weeks before, Steves said he didn't know it was there, even though it was just two blocks from his church, the Washington Post reported.

"For an entire community of my down-and-out neighbors, this hygiene center is the only place to take a shower, wash clothes, repair a bike, or get a sweater, blanket or hot meal," Steves posted on Bluesky. "It's an invisible need... an invisible center... helping invisible people."

Built in 1981, the 5,000-square-foot building was once an emissions testing center. Since 2020, the owner let the Jean Kim Foundation use the building rent free as a place where the unhoused and impoverished can get cleaned up. According to the foundation's website, the Hygiene Center has two private showers on site. The center also provides clothing, meals, and a bi-monthly mobile medical clinic.

Between April 2020 and September 2025, the hygiene center provided 51,543 showers, My Edmonds News reported. The center was also projected to serve 13,100 meals in 2025 alone. But then the owner announced he wanted to sell the property for about $2.5 million, Jean Kim Foundation Executive Director Sandra Mears told the Herald Net. So, the organization was in search of a new home in the South Snohomish County area that was big enough for at least two shower facilities and up to five bathrooms, where rent didn't exceed $3,800 a month. 

The story in My Edmonds News informed Rick Steves about the center's existence and its plight. His solution was to make sure it stayed where it was, posting on Bluesky that "... it's hard to imagine it popping up somewhere else in these NIMBY times."

Steves said he bought the property because he takes the concept of "love thy neighbor" seriously, and he was frustrated that the government can't do more to provide help for those in need. "You could put all the charities together, all the nice guys like me together, and it is a pittance compared to what our president can do with the stroke of his Sharpie," Steves told the Washington Post.

But Steves hasn't just made a name for himself through travel advice such as outlining what he refuses to buy while traveling or warning that booking a hotel for one night could cost you. He has also assembled a decent-sized fortune. Through his television shows, books, and newspaper columns, Steves has accumulated a net worth of $15 million, per CelebrityNetWorth.com.

The hygiene center isn't his first charitable real estate transaction. Steves donated a 24-unit Lynnwood apartment building he owned, worth $4 million, to the YWCA Seattle King Snohomish to assist single mothers and their children, the Seattle Times reported. He also gave $1 million to the Edmonds Center for the Arts and $50,000 to the ACLU, per CelebrityNetWorth.