Home Boy

EDMONDS, WASHINGTON - Rick Steves gets around. He'd better. After all, he's one of the foremost authorities on traveling in Europe. Pick a place you want to go and, he's almost certainly already been there, probably more than once or twice.

As far and wide as he travels, his head and heart are never far from home - Edmonds, Washington, a city of 40,000 on the Puget Sound just north of Seattle. He's the city's best-known booster, he's also one of its biggest benefactors, with generous contributions over the years to, just for starters, the library, the Edmonds Center for the Arts, the Cascade Symphony Orchestra, a new waterfront senior center and to his church, Trinity Lutheran.

He first went to Europe in 1969 touring piano factories with his father, a piano importer. Bankrolled by earnings from piano lessons he'd given, second time around Steve went solo. That's when he first learned about the cause nearest and dearest to him - affordable housing.

"Before 'Europe Through the Back Door,'" my travels were "Europe Through the Gutter." He wrote in a recent blog (http://blog.ricksteves.com/). "As a teenage backpacker, life for me was the daily challenge of finding an affordable (i.e., free) place to sleep." On trains and ferries, on the floor of friends' hotel rooms or of barns in the Swiss Alps. "How else would a white, middle-class American kid gain a firsthand appreciation for the value of a safe and comfortable place to sleep?"

The lesson stuck. Think retirement savings and stocks and bonds usually come to mind. Not Steves. He prefers real estate, investing "in cheap apartments to house struggling neighbors." He started small, buying a duplex in 1990 that was next door to Trinity Lutheran and, working with the congregation, gave it to a non-profit to use to house victims of domestic violence and their kids. Worked so well he did it three more times.

His largest investment came in 2005 when he purchased a 24-unit apartment building occupied by low-income residents in Lynnwood, a city next door to Edmonds. He named it Trinity Place in honor of his church and reached a 15-year agreement with the YWCA of Seattle/King County/Snohomish County that as existing low-income residents moved-out, it could use the units to provide transitional housing for up to a year to women who'd been victims of domestic violence. In many instances, it helped moms reunite with their kids. The Housing Authority of Snohomish County stepped forward to provide HUD-funded, project-based rental vouchers, capping rents at 30 percent of monthly incomes. And Edmonds' Noon Rotary Club helped upgrade the building, including a new playground for the kids who would live there.

By all accounts, Trinity Place has earned substantial returns. "At least 85 percent" of the women who've lived" there "have moved," reported The Everett Herald (https://www.heraldnet.com/news/rick-steves-donates-apartment-complex-to-ywca/), "into other permanent housing and manage to stay there." To date, added The Seattle Times (http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/edit-ricksteveshomelessgift19/), it's "helped 61 impoverished families, including 125 children, get back on their feet and avoid homelessness."

"It's been a godsend honestly," former resident named Tanya told KING-TV (http://www.king5.com/entertainment/television/programs/evening/travel-guru-rick-steves-donates-housing-complex/426904033). A recovering addict, a year earlier she'd been homeless and her kids were in foster care. "Trinity Place means being able to have my kids with me and being able to raise them and be a mom again and get my life back on track,"

Now Steves has taken another big step. His initial agreement with the YWCA was that, at expiration, he'd have the option to take back the building and do with as he pleased and even, holding onto the "security of knowing I had that equity if I needed it."

Twelve years into the agreement, he's decided he doesn't need the equity and doesn't want to hold onto the building and, instead he's donating Trinity Place - now valued at $4 million, The Everett Herald reported, outright to the YWCA.

What he's done at Trinity Place he's written, "wasn't particularly noble or compassionate," but "just thoughtful use of my capital." "Now the YWCA can plan into the future knowing this facility is theirs. And I'll forever enjoy knowing that, with this gift, I'm still helping them with their mission."

"We're so incredibly grateful to Rick," Mary Anne Dillon-Bryant, executive director of the YWCA in Snohomish County, told The Herald. "A remarkable gesture," added The Seattle Times editorial board.

In the end, Trinity Place has never been about rates of return or dollars in the bank, Steves said, but about but about "the joy of housing otherwise desperate people." That's reward for him.

If we are best defined by what we give and not what we get, Steves probably has earned way more than he could ever have imagined. When our accounts are squared may the same be said of us.

###