Lynnwood hygiene center neighbors discuss community impact, solutions

Published 1:30 am Thursday, February 26, 2026

EVERETT — About 50 community members gathered in the Lynnwood City Council chamber Wednesday to discuss how a local hygiene center has impacted the area.

The Jean Kim Foundation Hygiene Center, located at 19726 64th Ave. W in Lynnwood, provides free showers to people experiencing homelessness. In 2025, the center provided more than 10,000 showers, along with free meals and clothing.

About 87% of the center’s visitors come from Lynnwood, said Sandra Mears, executive director of the Jean Kim Foundation.

“These are our neighbors,” Mears said. “These are community members that come to the hygiene center for a number of reasons. There’s a constellation of factors that brings them to the hygiene center, and our goal is to meet people where they’re at.”

In November, the foundation announced that it would have to close the hygiene center’s doors as the owner of the property was looking to sell. A few weeks later, travel writer and local philanthropist Rick Steves purchased the property for $2.5 million.

Before Steves’ announcement, the hygiene center received about $300,000 in donations to save the property. On Wednesday, Steves said he is matching the $300,000, putting a total of $600,000 to capital improvements. Steves said he envisions six shower units — up from the center’s current two units — with mirrors and space to sit down. He also envisions bathroom units and a bank of washers and dryers. The seating area, which is currently an outdoor picnic table, would be upgraded with more tables, both indoor and outdoor. An update could also include renovated offices and new landscaping of the front yard, Steves said.

“We’re talking with a caring local contractor, and we want to make this dream come true,” Steves said.

While Steve’s purchase brings more stability to the hygiene center, it’s led to mixed reactions from the community, prompting the city to host the roundtable discussion Wednesday. Neighbors of the hygiene center, including residents and businesses, said that since the center opened in 2020, it’s led to an increase in crime and made the area feel more dangerous. Jacqui Adams, who moved to the neighborhood in 2017, said she doesn’t feel safe walking around with her two young children.

“If I had known the center was opening there at the time, which I didn’t, I definitely would have been in favor of its presence,” she said. “I believe in rehabilitation and recovery. I care about people in need, and I want to see them get help. After five years, my feelings are a little more mixed. I saw a definite, swift, drastic, negative change in the neighborhood around 2021.”

In the past year, the Lynnwood Police Department has received 37 calls for service specific to the hygiene center, Police Cmdr. Justin Gann said. In a 0.6-mile radius in the same time period, the department received more than 3,000 calls for service. From 2019 to 2020, before the hygiene center opened, the department received about 700 fewer calls for service in the area, Gann said.

One of the areas that has been most affected is Gold Park, Lynnwood Parks Superintendent Eric Peterson said. In 2009, the city partnered with Edmonds College and the Snohomish Tribe of Indians to build an ethnobotanical garden at the park. For more than 10 years, Edmonds College students would go to the park for classes and events. In 2022, the college broke off its agreement with the city after a student found a firearm in the park, Peterson said.

“Homeless activity, drug activity, drug paraphernalia, overdoses, assaults, staff having to deal with human feces, all these kind of issues continued in 2023,” he said. “We were visiting the park two times daily just to try to control the activity there.”

In 2024, the city opened a disc golf course at the park to try to “input some positive activity,” Peterson said.

“I think we’ve made some improvements, I think it’s a better place to go,” he said. “It’s not even close to perfect, but it’s better. Now, with that being said, I don’t think the people disappeared. I think they went to other areas.”

For 25 years, Jason Cockburn was homeless and spent time in Lynnwood’s parks. That changed when Jean Kim — who founded the Jean Kim Foundation in 2015 before her passing in 2021 — encouraged him to enroll in classes at Edmonds College. Now, he’s the vice president and founder of the Second Chance Foundation, an Everett-based nonprofit that connects formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals with higher education opportunities.

Cockburn suggested that visitors of the hygiene center could be interested in attending park cleanups and other community events.

“Maybe they want to learn about one of their favorite plants and all the stuff that goes on in your park,” he said. “Because when you give people a purpose, when you give people kindness, when you give people direction and belief in themselves, anything is possible.”

For part of Wednesday’s discussion, attendees brainstormed solutions to people’s concerns. Potential solutions included building more bathrooms in the city, hosting park cleanups, offering entry-level jobs to hygiene center visitors, further exploring community partnerships and hosting mental health first aid trainings. Lynnwood Mayor George Hurst said city leadership will discuss the ideas and figure out what the city can implement.

“It’s not going to be forgotten,” Hurst said. “We’re going to use it. We’re going to find solutions. We’re going to make the hygiene center work.”

In January, the city celebrated the opening of the Lynnwood Neighborhood Center, a community hub for local nonprofits and resources. Steves, who donated $4 million to the neighborhood center, said he hopes it can be a step in addressing some of the root causes of homelessness.

“People can be one paycheck away from homelessness in this hard, aggressive world that we live in, and good, hard-working people can just get a string of bad luck, and they can be out in the street,” Steves said. “Now, if we have a society where if you hit that bottom and it’s just a mess, you get embroiled in that, and they may never get out of it. Or, we can have a society where, when people do have that string of bad luck and fall off the cart, they have a little bit of compassion that lets them bounce back into the game.”

Jenna Peterson: 425-339-3486; jenna.peterson@heraldnet.com; X: @jennarpetersonn.