Yousri Omar was recognized as a Hero of the Deep at a recent Seattle Kraken hockey game for his pro bono legal work with Mary’s Place families!

Tara, a dedicated single mom, was working hard to provide for herself and her family, but after the birth of her youngest, her minimum-wage job could no longer keep up with the cost of caring for two kids. With support from our Outreach team, she and her kids are rebuilding stability with help from a supportive housing community.

Once a week, you’ll find Amirah Casey at Mary’s Place, serving meals and swapping stories with families staying at The Glen shelter in Seattle. For Amirah, sharing a meal and serving others is about so much more than food—it’s about care, dignity, and community.

Research is unequivocal: Childhood homelessness creates trauma that echoes across lifetimes, affecting educational outcomes, physical and mental health, and future economic stability. Every night a child spends without stable housing multiplies these impacts.

In King County, approximately 7.4% of residents identify as Black and just over 1% identify as Native American. Yet at Mary’s Place, 88% of the families we serve identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color. This disproportionality makes one thing clear: homelessness cannot be addressed without confronting the structural and historical racism embedded in our systems.

Following a breakup with his long-term partner, Ryan suddenly found himself supporting himself and his son, Andrew on a single income. Ryan worked tirelessly to stretch his budget and keep life as stable as possible for his son, but the fire turned an already difficult situation into a crisis…

Homelessness among babies and toddlers is one of our community’s most urgent crises, but “it’s kind of an invisible problem,” shares Jason Gortney, Chief Program and Innovation officer at Mary’s Place, “People just don’t have any idea that in King County, we have families sleeping in tents and cars with babies.”

The day Jasmine and her children were evicted is a moment she will never forget. “I just remember my kids asking me, ‘Mommy, where are we going to go?’” she recalls. “It broke my heart.” Today, after receiving support from Mary’s Place, Jasmine and her kids are building a bright future in their new apartment.

In a recent Mary’s Place Moment conversation, CEO Dominique Alex sat down with two people who play an essential role in one of our most joyful and transformative programs: Make-a-Home. She was joined by Olga Chinka, Make-a-Home Coordinator and Katie Bernson, a longtime volunteer partner with Coldstream Wealth Management. Their conversation offered a powerful look at how a furnished home can change the entire trajectory of a family leaving homelessness.

When her Multiple Sclerosis (MS) symptoms led Nicole to fall behind on rent, she found herself living in her car with her young daughter, Ella, as winter quickly approached. Hope returned when she connected with our mobile outreach team.