"​It began with one house and one family. It was a dream and a vision. It was Mary House."

In 1981, Bill and Sharon Murphy opened the door of their home in Brookland, Washington, DC to a immigrant family in need. They have never stopped opening doors since. Today, Mary House owns and operates 13 properties and has provided a safe home and welcoming community to more than 700 immigrant and refugee families.

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Where It All Began: Meet the Founders

Bill and Sharon met in 1976 at CCNV — the Community for Creative Non-Violence in Washington, DC. That chance meeting changed the course of their lives and led to the creation of Mary House. But how they each arrived there could not have been more different.​

Meet Bill. Bill grew up in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of a real estate family. A good life was laid out before him — one that could have easily continued into the next generation. But through his years at The College of the Holy Cross, his Catholic faith deepened into something that demanded more. To Bill, the Gospel wasn't something you read on Sunday. It was something you lived every day. In the summer of 1973, he boarded a bus to Washington, DC with nothing but what he could carry — no job, no housing, no plan — just a belief that God was calling him to live and serve among the poor.

When he arrived, he walked from Catholic church to Catholic church looking for shelter. One of those doors opened to Father Horace McKenna, SJ — known throughout Washington as the city's "priest to the poor," founder of SOME and co-founder of Martha's Table. Father McKenna had no shelter to offer, but he had something just as valuable — a name. 

​He sent Bill to the Community for Creative Non-Violence — CCNV — and told him to ask for Kathleen Guinan. She offered him a cot for a single night. Instead of sleeping, he spent the night fixing things around the shelter. As a result, she offered another. Those nights became a new life — and the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two of them.

Meet Sharon. Sharon grew up in a union family in East Detroit. It was a neighborhood where families worked hard and still fell short, where the system failed more often than it helped, and where poverty was not something you read about — it was something you lived. Sharon knew that world from the inside. But she also knew she couldn't change it from there. So she packed her bags and headed to the east coast.

Driven by a belief that real change required real presence, she made her way to the Washington DC area, planting herself in Maryland and immersing herself in communities committed to justice, service, and standing with the poor. She wasn't there to volunteer on weekends. She was there to be part of a revolution.
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One night she found herself at an event where Ed Guinan — founder of CCNV — was speaking about the work they do with the homeless community. Here was someone not just talking the talk, but walking it. Moved by what she heard, she asked if she could join the CCNV community — not to observe, but to live it.

That is how Bill and Sharon found each other — two people drawn to the same door at CCNV from opposite ends of the world. They married in 1977. And in 1981, inspired by Dorothy Day's vision of compassion-driven service, they opened the doors of their Brookland home to a family in need of shelter.

It was the first door Mary House ever opened. It would not be the last.

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A Mission That Kept Growing

For the first fourteen years, Mary House served immigrant and refugee families quietly and consistently — building trust in the Brookland community one family at a time, sustained entirely by donors, faith partners, and neighbors who believed in the work and kept saying yes.

Then, in 1995, everything expanded.

Bill and Sharon traveled to refugee camps in Bosnia as part of war trauma teams organized by the National Organization for Victim Assistance. What they witnessed there — families separated by war, stripped of everything familiar, searching desperately for safety — was not so different from what they had been serving at home. They came back changed. Mary House expanded its mission to include the resettlement of war-displaced refugee families, and over the years welcomed families fleeing crisis in Bosnia, Iraq, Ethiopia, and beyond.

Today, the primary population served remains immigrant families from Central and South America — parents and children seeking safety from violence in their home countries. But Mary House has never turned away from the world's crises. When refugees need a home, the door is open.

​That has always been the only rule.

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A Call Answered in Concrete and Faith

In 2015, Pope Francis called on every family in the world to open their doors to immigrants and refugees. For Bill and Sharon, this was not a new ask. They had been living that call for 34 years. But when they looked around, every unit at Mary House was full. Families were waiting. There was no room.

So they made room.

​On an empty lot next to one of their existing buildings, they broke ground on Regina Maria — named after Pope Francis's mother and built as a living memorial to his call. Twelve new apartments, four dedicated to senior citizens, designed intentionally as Mary House's first intergenerational property — a place where the elderly and young families would live alongside one another, share community, and look out for each other the way neighbors once did. 

To build it, they turned to family — the way they always have. Their son Mike, a career firefighter and owner of his own construction company, had spent years working alongside his father maintaining and improving Mary House properties. When it came time to build Regina Maria from the ground up — the first property Mary House ever constructed from scratch — there was no question who would lead it. Mike broke ground, poured the foundation, and helped build his family's answer to the Pope's call, one brick at a time.

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A New Generation, The Same Heart

Bill and Sharon still run Mary House today. And the next generation has joined them.

Their daughter Katie, an art teacher, hosts a bi-monthly Kraft Club for the teenagers of Mary House families — bringing creativity, community, and connection to the kids growing up inside these walls. Their son Mike helps keep the buildings standing, maintaining and improving the properties his family has spent a lifetime building. And their daughter Megan joined as Director of Development in February 2026, carrying the mission into its next chapter.

​Mary House has always been a family. Not just the Murphys — but every family who has ever walked through one of these doors.

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The Proof Is in the People

"Mary House has taught me how to be a compassionate person. If my family hadn't found Mary House — who had compassion and empathy towards us — I genuinely don't think I would've gotten as far as I have." — Claudia

Claudia first came to Mary House as a teenager, moving into the program after years of instability that had taken her family through nine different schools. At Mary House she found something she hadn't had in years — consistency, community, and people who showed up for her. She became a junior counselor in the After School Program, formed relationships that shaped who she became, and discovered a gift for connecting with children who were carrying more than they should have to carry.

She went on to become the first in her family to graduate from college, earning her degree from Trinity Washington University. And then she came back.

Today, Claudia works at Mary House as a staff member — planning the very activities that once gave her an outlet, designing crafts with the specific personalities and struggles of each child in mind, and being for them what Maribel once was for her.

​She is not the exception. She is the reason.

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​Open a Door With Us

For over 45 years, Mary House has been sustained by one thing — people who believed in this work and chose to be part of it. Not government contracts. Not institutional funding. Just donors, faith communities, and neighbors who saw a family in need and said yes.

Seven hundred families have walked through these doors. The next one is waiting.

​There is a place for you in this story.

Mary House never turns a family away based on what they can pay. Your gift bridges the gap between what families can afford and the true cost of a safe home.​

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There are many ways to be part of this story. Volunteer your time, share our mission, or partner with us. Every act of support opens another door for a family in need.​

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