EVERETT, JUNE 19: She had a very comfortable real estate career living in Snohomish and at the same time was drugging and drinking to the point of damaging, life-altering results.
Her sobriety has now resulted in 175 beds in 22 houses in Everett and neighboring cities to help homeless people get off the street and get clean. It’s called Kennedy’s Place, a nonprofit she founded that provides sober and transitional housing named after her 9-year-old daughter.
Lynn Zielasko is 3 ½ years sober now, her second attempt at recovery after a failed first try in 2019. What she and her supporters have achieved to help addicts get clean in less than a Presidential election term is making an impact in Snohomish County.
“My lived experience with drugs and alcohol goes back to my teenage years,” Zielasko tells EverettPost.com. “My dad was and is still an alcoholic”, Zielakso says. Her parents divorced when she was 11. “I grew up around it (substance abuse)”, Zielasko admits. “I started dabbling with drinking when I was 11 or 12…and that’s when I started making bad decisions.”
Zielasko returned to Alcoholics Anonymous a second time after a 2023 car crash that she doesn’t remember. “So, January 12, 2023, I was living in Wenatchee. I came over to Marysville. We were going to a (work) leadership conference the next day, and we had happy hour with my office people from Marysville, and I was the first one there,” Zielakso recalls.
“I was the last one to leave, and then we also went to a bar, and there were a couple of people that were still, you know, still in it. And I left that bar,” Zielasko manages to recall, “and I don’t know how I got back to my house in Snohomish. I had a house here (Snohomish), and I had a house in Wenatchee and I had wrecked my car.”
“I didn’t know what happened”, Zielasko admits about the crash. “It was the most eye-opening experience because I nursed that car home, and I don’t know how I got it there. I don’t know where I wrecked it. I had zero recollection of any of it, and that was how my alcoholism had turned into me being a blackout drunk.”
That was age 45 for Zielakso as she re-traces the path of her addiction to her youth, “And so, from the age of 13 to 16, I was just doing a lot of really crazy things that most very young teenagers should not be experiencing. Four months after my 16th birthday, I got pregnant with my first child. So, at 16, I was now having a baby, and that is pretty much probably what saved my life at that point.”
Zielasko and her child’s father were together for 12 years. “We had three kids total together. But in that that 12 years I smoked a lot of pot. I was drinking here and there, but it wasn’t too much until I got divorced when I was 28, and that’s kind of when the floodgates of alcohol opened up.”
Despite those floodgates, Zielasko managed an enviable real estate agent career—acquiring homes on either side of Stevens Pass and she was part of the real estate agency’s leadership team.
“I just literally was numbing my world, numbing myself”, she concedes. “Every other Friday, it was a free-for-all (dropping off her kids for the father’s visitation). I couldn’t wait ’til five o’clock and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. I went through stages of where I was using drugs. Cocaine and meth a few times, but mostly cocaine, smoking pot. And then it just kind of turned into alcohol. I was a very successful real estate agent through most of this.”
Asked if she fit the definition of a functioning addict, Zielasko quickly replies, “100 percent. I was very much functioning. I would get my work done and the minute I had my work done, I was drinking and using. That was in 2000.”
The dichotomy became exposed during a work trip to a place that could have potentially made her addiction even more damaging, New Orleans.
“I was the team leader at Keller Williams in 2018 and 2019, and that was kind of when it was brought to my attention that maybe I needed to make some lifestyle changes,” she says referencing her boss at the time. “I was supposed to be the leader. There were 150 agents and I, we went on a leadership conference to New Orleans, and that was sort of my demonstration of making really bad decisions in front of all of my peers.”
Zielasko remembers friendships and relationships falling apart, “they were, you know, telling me that I needed to stop, chill out. I ruined three of my really good friends. I just kind of crushed those relationships. And then my position as a team leader at Keller Williams was on the line, and my boss, who was also my friend said to me if you don’t quit drinking, I’m going to have to fire you, and so I stopped drinking for six months.”
Confronted, she started going to AA meetings, but fully adds, “I wasn’t ready yet. That was my very first (attempt at sobriety). You know, dipping my toes into the world of recovery. But I wasn’t all in. I went to meetings. You know, I had a book, I never opened it. I didn’t have a sponsor. I just was showing up.”
It didn’t last long, says Zielasko, “And I ended up getting into another relationship after being sober for about six months and then I was right back to where I was.”
Four years later, the car crash jolted her reality.
“That was definitely my spiritual awakening”, Zielakso asserts. “With that, I made a decision that day. January 13th, 2023, that I was never drinking again. I went back to the (AA) meeting (place) that I had very first gone to that next day.”
“I got a 24-hour coin,” she says, remembering the impact. “I went back to Wenatchee. And I started going to AA in Wenatchee—there’s a very close-knit recovery group over there, and I’m so very grateful for those people and that resource.”
This is where the nexus for Kennedy’s Place began.
Attending an AA meeting in Wenatchee, the phrase “Oxford House” is uttered to Zielasko. The real estate veteran had never heard the term before. “So I’m sitting next one of my now friends, and he said that he lived in an Oxford House. And I said, well, ‘what is an Oxford House?’ I’ve been a real estate agent for many, many years, and I’ve never heard of that, especially having my own rentals. And he said, well, it’s a house full of men (living in addiction recovery).”
She recounts the rest of the answer she received, “Eight men living in a house. Shared rooms. They shared the chores. They have house meetings and they hold each other accountable. And I was like, that’s so interesting. I’ve never heard of that. I’ve never heard of that concept and I was completely intrigued. But then, I just, you know, I didn’t really do anything about it because I was still just trying to strap my brain back onto my head. And so he would tell me more about their experiences, and, and I would hear stories, because there’s always a story at any of these houses, whether it’s an Oxford or a recovery house in general.”
The Oxford House revelation was eventually matched-up with a speaking appearance by an official from the State Department of Corrections.
“And then the Department of Corrections came and did a talk (for the recovery group) on the necessity and the need of housing for people that are incarcerated. The Department of Corrections will pay a person if they are programming (in rehab) and staying out of trouble. Once they’ve been released, they will pay up to six months for this individual’s housing voucher, they call it.”
The dots connected. “And I said, hey, I am in recovery. I have rentals. You know, what would this look like?” Zielasko asked. “And so, he explained to me that these are the things that you have to do (to operate for Dept. of Corrections). You have to have a certain standard. You can put two people per room as long as it’s a 10 by 10 room. No bunk beds, blah blah, blah, and I said okay, and so I converted my first set of fourplexes into this housing.”
The response was instant, Zielasko says, “And immediately, it was full (of residents). And then I purchased another house in Yakima. It was a six bedroom house and 12 guys were in that house, and also was immediately full. (By then) I was living in Snohomish County, and so I had an opportunity to purchase another house in Mukilteo and I decided that I was going to convert that into an 11-man (capacity) house.”
There was some resistance, Zielasko offered, “It was the very first recovery residence in Mukilteo. And so we had a little pushback from, you know, Mukilteo Police Department and we had the Department of Corrections and also WAQRR (Washington Alliance for Quality Recovery Residences) because I’m accredited through WAQRR, which advocates for this housing and we, we deal a lot with NIMBY–not in my backyard.”
Zielasko accepts the neighborhood pushback, “And I understand that, you know, but you also understand that everybody makes bad decisions. And I believe that everybody deserves a second chance. So we opened up our first house in Snohomish County in January of 2025. Immediately following, we had one open on Colby in Everett, mid-January of last year.”
The openings for Kennedy’s Place continued, “April we opened another one on Rainier in Everett. And then they just kind of happen, every month or two. I either acquire a new house or somebody comes to me and says, hey, I love what you’re doing, would you want to lease my house out?”
Zielasko explains the contractual component for the sober recovery housing thusly, “We do long-term leases. I’m not going to just rent something for a year. I want a three to five year lease at minimum. We actually look for 10-year leases if people are willing. And we’ve just we’ve just been opening these houses.”
The homeless wanting sobriety have been moving in.
“So, when somebody gets accepted to our house, we have an 18-page handbook, and that handbook consists of standards and rules”, Zielasko affirms. “The minimum standard to be in one of our houses in Snohomish County, we have a weekly house meeting that is mandatory to attend. Every house has a house manager and that house manager creates a meeting time that is consistent every week, so all residents of the house are required to come to that meeting and do a check-in.”
“And in that check-in, they have to do a minimum of three self-help meetings per week. So, AA, NA (Narcotics Anonymous), CA (Cocaine Anonymous). Church can count as one.”
The first three months of residency at Kennedy’s Place are key to transforming addiction she says, “I just want them to work on their recovery for the first 90 days that they’re with us. Once we’ve done that, then we do smart goals with them. Where do you want to be in a month? In three months, six months, a year? And what are the steps that we need to take to get you there?”
“We’re creating a sense of unity and fellowship, and showing people that they’re not alone. That other people are going through the exact same thing that they are.”
As a recovering addict, Zielasko applies her own standard to the network of homes in Kennedy’s Place, “If I won’t sleep in that house, I don’t expect anyone else to.”
“The houses are very clean,” Zielasko proceeds, “because we want to create an environment of stability and of somebody that wants to be in our house. (That) They want to come home at night. They want to know that life can be different. Life can be better and there is a better way than living on the streets, living in a tent, living under the freeway or in jail or prison.”
That respect for one’s residence goes hand in hand with building the self-esteem that bolsters sobriety, says Zielasko, “It’s creating a sense of home, right? And we want these guys to be proud of where they live and proud of their space and to be able to say, ‘hey, Mom’, or ‘hey, Dad’, or, you know, bring their kids over to the house because that’s allowed and say, ‘this is my space, this is my house’. You (family) can come and we can cook dinner and you can come and sit in the living room and show their families that they are striving to regain a sense of normalcy so that eventually, they can get their own space, their own apartment house, whatever that looks like.”
The ladder of accountability often starts from the bottom rung when homeless addicts enter Kennedy’s Place. “Most of these guys come to us, and they don’t even have an ID”, Zielasko reports. “So we are really starting at rock bottom with them and it’s not just guys, we have 19 men’s houses and three women’s houses.”
Zielasko is adding more rungs to the accountability ladder as Kennedy’s Place expands. For employment opportunities, there’s a handyman service to perform minor house repairs, landscaping work, and a taxpayer grant will pay for seven computers and printers to create job resumes at several houses to apply for employment outside Kennedy’s Place.
The inspiration behind Kennedy’s Place, Zielasko, says reverentially, is her 9-year-old daughter. “I have three grown children, four grandchildren. And Kennedy was my geriatric pregnancy at age 39. Kennedy went through mom’s rough patch,” Zielasko concedes trying to suppress potential tears, “the roughest patch.”
“She was the one thing that kept me going and kept my head above water, and so she now has a legacy with her name on that. Kennedy’s Place started when I decided that I was going to do this back in January of 2024. And it’s just it’s just grown, and it’s grown exponentially, and it continues to grow.”
The tie that binds this recovery process within Kennedy’s Place is, “Every single person that works for Kennedy’s Place is in recovery. So, we all have lived experience”, Zielasko points out regarding the street cred necessary to gain trust.
But they rely on outside expertise to support their recovery residents. “You send somebody to a mental health (specialist), and maybe they’re not telling that mental health specialist the whole story. So we want to get down to people’s levels and gain that trust because that’s a huge thing. People in addiction,” Zielasko says invoking her own path to recovery, “we have huge trust issues, trust issues with everybody.”
“To be able to break down those walls and get through that barrier to gain trust and to be able to have conversations so that we know ‘where do they need help the most?’ Not just thinking that we know it, but actually asking the questions and getting to the bottom of the thing so that we can create a solution. We’re just trying to create that environment and everybody’s holding each other accountable.”