mary’s place story & history
mary's place story began in 1999 as a day center for women experiencing homelessness.
Women were walking from service to service, carrying their home on their backs, trying to get their physical needs met. They were waiting in line for hours for meals, laundry, medical care, benefits, to use a free phone, or to apply for housing and employment. With a Boeing Employee's Community Fund grant and the passion of a dedicated board and staff, Mary’s Place opened as a day center for women experiencing homelessness. The women developed the structure and daily schedule that remains in effect today: two meals a day, hygiene facilities, showers, laundry, medical care, support groups, and ample resources for housing, employment, and benefits.
In 2010, the impacts of the nationwide recession were still being felt. At Mary’s Place, we saw a surge of women with children with nowhere to go. It was heartbreaking to have to turn these families away at the end of each day to hide in restrooms, sleep in a car, or ride the bus all night to stay safe and warm. Mary's Place turned to the faith community for help and together opened their first crisis response night shelter for women and children. The shelter rotated between 20 participating congregations, one of the few places where a woman with children could find a safe place to sleep at night.
Soon after, Mary’s Place opened its first emergency family shelter in a building awaiting development in downtown Seattle at 4th and Bell, providing night shelter for 48 women and children. The organization went on to find several other vacant buildings awaiting other uses where it created temporary emergency family shelters and has done that more than 25 times in empty buildings on loan from Amazon, PEMCO, Vulcan Inc., SRM Development, the City of Seattle, King County, private owners, and others.
The first Mary's Place Family Center opened in North Seattle in a former bank building on loan from the City of Seattle in 2015. As well as providing night shelter for 100 family members experiencing homelessness, this 24/7 family center provided housing, employment, and health resources, co-located with more than 40 local service providers. A congregate shelter style, the North Seattle Family Center closed in early 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began.
In the spring of 2016, Mary's Place partnered with Amazon to turn an old Travelodge hotel on Amazon-owned property into a shelter for just over 200 family members, giving the organization a total of 400 beds. When that building was demolished to make way for a new headquarters building, Amazon converted a former Days Inn hotel they owned into a new shelter to replace it. This location was temporary, and Amazon announced they would build a permanent shelter for Mary’s Place in their new headquarters location that opened in early 2020!
Thanks to an outpouring of support from individuals and local businesses, the 2016 annual No Child Sleeps Outside crowdfunding campaign raised just over $4 million in 45 days. Starbucks, the Starbucks Foundation, and the Schultz Family Foundation each donated $1 million to the effort. With that additional funding, Mary's Place moved quickly to open an additional 24/7 family center shelter in a King County-owned building in White Center.
The Mary's Place Family Center shelter in Northshore opened for 80 family members in a King County-owned building, a former Sheriff’s office, in September 2017.
In the summer of 2018, Mary’s Place purchased its first permanent location, a former hospital and treatment center in Burien, where they could address the growing needs in South King County. The downtown hotel location closed, and the Family Center in Burien opened that August.
Another successful No Child Sleeps Outside campaign in 2019 raised $2.4 million and allowed Mary’s Place to open a “rapid exit” shelter on Aurora Ave N in Seattle. Mary’s Place had been successfully piloting a national best practice called Diversion with families in King County and wanted to scale the program to help more families move directly from unsheltered homelessness to housing. Diversion is an approach that involves working with families to identify their strengths and needs, coupled with a small amount of flexible funding to address barriers to housing quickly, within 30 days. In June 2019, Mary’s Place opened the Family Diversion Center.
In March of 2020, Mary’s Place and Amazon were planning a grand opening of the new family center shelter built inside the Amazon Seattle headquarters when the coronavirus pandemic hit. The state of Washington and the world closed down to prevent the spread of the virus and save lives.
Mary’s Place Family Center in The Regrade opened and began welcoming families in on March 9, 2020. The timing of its opening at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic proved critical. The unique, intentional design of the eight-story building, with private guest rooms on four floors, enabled Mary’s Place to provide safe and socially distanced support for families when it was needed most. This new space has room for 200 family members. The large industrial kitchen prepares hundreds of meals each day, a large common area provides space for meals, community meetings, and fun activities like movie nights, and the rooftop deck gives kids a safe place to play outside.
At the same time, to keep families and staff safe, Mary’s Place closed four smaller shelters and reduced the number of families we could serve at several others. While the opening of the new Regrade shelter kept any families from having to return to homelessness, the result was the net loss of 300 beds for families experiencing homelessness in our community.
The Regrade building showed Mary’s Place a better way to provide a more dignified shelter experience for families. While considering ways to provide more privacy and a higher quality of accommodation, the onset of the pandemic created an urgency to move families to safer locations with more space to keep guests and staff healthy.
Mary’s Place had long ago realized that it was safer, more cost-effective, and less traumatic to the family and children to keep families in their homes and advocated for funding to prevent homelessness through rental assistance. The organization piloted several programs with private funding. When the pandemic began and eviction moratoriums were put in place, federal funding became available to provide rental assistance in King County and Washington state. Mary’s Place worked with several community organizations in a “Hub and Spoke” model to distribute nearly $2 million in rental assistance funds.
In October 2021, Mary’s Place was presented with an opportunity to open a family shelter in a former hotel in Bellevue, and on December 27, 2021, their first shelter on the Eastside opened with ~90 private rooms/baths for families. Thanks to a very successful No Child Sleeps Outside campaign and support from the community - Mary’s Place was able to add back most of the capacity lost when the pandemic hit.
The White Center shelter closed when the lease expired in January, and Mary’s Place repurposed the Family Diversion Center as a women's and children's only shelter.
Today, using their system of efficiently and effectively converting vacant buildings into temporary emergency family shelters, Mary’s Place continues to operate the drop-in women’s day center along with five 24x7 family center shelters that provide a warm bed, three meals a day, and a community of support for ~700 family members each night.
Mary's Place is working to address unique needs. The Popsicle Place program provides a safe, nurturing, home-like setting with professional medical care for families with children who have life-threatening diseases, and Baby’s Best Start accommodates moms with newborns who need some extra time to rest and bond with their babies. Learn more about Mary’s Place programs.
The organization promotes a three-pronged approach to addressing family homelessness in our community.
The safest and most effective (and most cost-effective) way to address family homelessness is to keep families in their hard-won homes. Shelter is traumatic, especially for children. We can prevent that trauma and disrupt the cycle of generational homelessness by preventing homelessness with rental assistance and stability supports. Mary’s Place is leading with prevention and working to reframe the homeless response system.
Today, family shelters in King County, including the five Mary’s Place shelters, are full, and the Emergency Family Intake Line, which Mary’s Place operates for King County, takes more calls than ever before. 50-60 families call each day for shelter, and only two or three are offered a place to come inside. The Mary’s Place mobile outreach team works with unsheltered families in cars, tents, and area hospitals providing supplies and housing resources.
And for those families with acute needs and more significant barriers, Mary’s Place provides 700 beds of critical emergency family shelter. By investing in prevention, we can reduce the number of shelters needed in our community.
The Mary's Place model is simple - partner with anyone and everyone who can help to address the issue of family homelessness. Join us!