About Us

Marguerite’s Place has a 27-year history of empowering families in transition on their journeys to self-sufficiency. Founded by Sister Sharon Walsh and Sister Elaine Fahey and named for St. Marguerite D’Youville, Marguerite’s Place began with 10 Transitional Housing apartment units on Palm Street in 1994. To this day, these apartments welcome mothers in crisis and provide supportive transitional programming to help families stabilize and launch towards independence.

 

At our program’s inception, we realized that safe, trauma-informed Child Care programming was a key component to not only our parent’s stabilization, but to the whole family’s ability to heal and grow together. Originally designed for resident children, we saw a community need for our services and expanded our childcare to community families as well in 2009.

 

In the early 2000s, we saw the emergence of the affordable housing crisis; despite our families’ best efforts, it became more challenging for single parent households to access affordable, permanent housing options. They simply needed more time to build income, savings, and finish their education, and the prices of rent continued to increase. In response to this need, Marguerite’s Place launched the MP Housing program, purchasing 10 condominium units across Nashua where Marguerite’s Place graduates could bridge the gap between transitional housing and permanent, long-term independent living.

 

In 2019, seeing the need for community across all of our programming, we launched individual and group supportive services to meet the growing needs of resident and non-resident families accessing our services.