Living with nuns: Priced out of D.C., young women found low rent with unlikely roommates

Former residents, current residents and friends of Anne Montgomery House begin a traditional Greek dance at the farewell celebration in Washington, D.C. on July 31, 2026. The community house,
run by Society of the Sacred Heart, is closing after a decade.

Charlotte Kesl for NPR

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Charlotte Kesl for NPR

Sister Diane Roche sits on the front porch of Anne Montgomery House, smiling as she thinks back to opening the home a decade ago.

The house, located in Northeast Washington, D.C., has given young women an affordable place to live while they studied, completed fellowships or launched careers in one of the nation’s most expensive cities.

By nightfall, it will close its doors for the last time.

“I’m 76 years old and running a house like this takes a lot of energy,” Roche said. “Something inside me just said this is it.”

Sister Diane Roche, 76, poses for a portrait on the front porch of Anne Montgomery House that is closing after ten years in Washington, D.C. on July 31, 2026. Sister Diane is part of Society of the Sacred Heart, an international congregation of Roman Catholic religious women, and ran programming at the community house that welcomed young women interested in spirituality and justice.

Sister Diane Roche, 76, pictured on the front porch of Anne Montgomery House said she’ll miss some of the daily rituals she shared with the home’s younger residents. “They keep me young,” she said. “You just become people together.”

Charlotte Kesl for NPR

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It’s one of several homes throughout the U.S. run by the Society of the Sacred Heart. As a member of the international religious order, Roche has worked in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo, helped establish similar intentional living communities in St. Louis and New Orleans, and today works with a local office of Catholic Charities, helping refugees resettle in the U.S. Anne Montgomery House was simply the latest expression of a calling she says has shaped her entire adult life.

“Time after time, place after place, wherever I went, I would find a way to build a community,” Roche said.

Anne Montgomery House is part of a broader housing trend emerging in expensive cities, in which early-career professionals are opting to live in Catholic-run homes that offer below-market rent.

But some residents find more than cheap housing. At Anne Montgomery, a group of young women found a built-in community and support network — an increasingly rare living arrangement, even as young adult incomes fail to keep pace with rent.

When Abigail Bulman, 23, arrived at the house, she expected little more than a roof over her head. Instead, she found herself sharing homemade dinners, among other daily routines, that she says transformed a group of strangers into something close to a family.

Abigail Bulman, a former resident of Anne Montgomery House, poses for a portrait in Washington, D.C. on July 31, 2026. The community house that is closing after ten years was run by Society of the Sacred Heart, an international congregation of Roman Catholic religious women.

Abigail Bulman, who arrived at Anne Montgomery House last year while on a fellowship with an international public relations firm, said affordability was a big factor in her decision to live there. She didn’t know it would also be a place she’d build lasting friendships.

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“I thought this was going to be a place that we pray in the morning, I had chores to do, and then I was going to go to bed here,” she said. “I had no idea they were going to be people that now have been my lifelong friends.”

The house the sisters built

Roche says she has always been drawn to bringing people together. But in Anne Montgomery House, she also saw a way to address a practical problem. The wider Sacred Heart order made it possible to keep rent below market rate because it owned the building.

Residents paid $500 a month for a shared room or $700 for a private room, giving young women an opportunity to study and build careers in Washington that might otherwise have been out of reach.

“The stipend for a Ph.D. is something like $700 a month,” Roche said. “How are you supposed to support yourself on that?”

In Washington, she said, even renting a room in a shared house can cost more than $1,000 a month, before food and utilities.

“It is extremely satisfying to know that simply by living in a house which we own, we can have these women living with us at a price that makes it possible for them to flourish,” Roche said.

But affordable housing was only part of what Roche wanted to create.

Over the years, Roche gathered women of different ages, faiths and backgrounds under one roof. She asked that they share meals, cook for one another, take part in brief morning reflection and commit themselves to some form of service. The home was named after Sister Anne Montgomery, a member of Sacred Heart and longtime peace activist who worked in conflict zones around the world.

Sister Claire Pratt, 86, holds a photo of Anne Montgomery, the namesake of the community house in Washington, D.C., on July 31, 2026. The home was run by Society of the Sacred Heart, an international congregation of Roman Catholic women, and is closing after a decade.

Charlotte Kesl for NPR

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What surprised Roche most, she says, was how much she gained in return. Living alongside women decades younger brought her companionship, laughter and fresh perspectives. She and the sisters were also drawn into the personal side of their lives, including relationships. When some residents would bring their boyfriends home for dinner, the sisters would “size them up and kind of vet them.”

“They keep me young,” she said. “You just become people together.”

Roche describes the home as a kind of “community light.” Unlike some intentional living arrangements, residents paid one fee that covered meals and household expenses, removing much of the financial stress that can strain communal living.

“A safe haven”

Bulman arrived at Anne Montgomery House in January 2025, shortly after graduating from college and accepting a fellowship with an international public relations firm in Washington. Like many young adults trying to establish themselves in one of the country’s most expensive cities, she needed a place she could afford.

“The financial component was large,” Bulman said. “But beyond that, I wouldn’t have been able to live in the environment that D.C. was in, with the work that I was doing, if I didn’t have that community aspect as well.”

For Bulman, that community meant coming home after long workdays to share dinners, conversations around the kitchen table and a house full of people who checked in on one another. Instead of ending each day alone, she returned to a place where she felt known.

Mary Gardner, 24, joined the home in the summer of 2024 while interning on Capitol Hill and preparing for her senior year at Catholic University. She couldn’t afford to live off campus. She was also looking for something else: “I needed a community that was like a safe haven,” Gardner said. “Like when you go home at the end of the day.”

Mary Gardner, a former resident of Anne Montgomery House, stands outside the home in Northeast Washington, D.C.

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Working on Capitol Hill during a politically charged time often left Gardner emotionally exhausted, the news headlines following her home each evening.

At the end of long days, she said, one of the sisters quietly became a steady source of comfort.

“I’d come home venting and angry or upset,” Gardner said. But Sister Clare Pratt, she said, “just listened.”

There were no lectures, Gardner said, no attempts to solve every problem — just patience, perspective and hope.

“No matter what kind of day you had,” Gardner said, “it was such a breath of fresh air.”

A disappearing housing model

Gardner’s experience reflects a challenge facing young adults well beyond the nation’s capital.

Across the country, soaring rents have made it increasingly difficult for students and early-career professionals to afford housing in major cities. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is now about $4,560 in New York City, $4,180 in San Francisco and $2,250 in Washington, D.C., according to a recent report from the rental platform Zumper. Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that a record 22.7 million renter households now spend more than 30% of their income on housing — the highest level ever recorded.

Young adults are especially vulnerable to being priced out because they typically lack the savings needed for security deposits, homeownership or high rents, says Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.

“They haven’t had a chance to get their footing,” Ellen said.

She says that intentional living communities aren’t a large-scale fix for the nation’s housing shortage, but they can offer young adults stability, mentorship and community, alongside affordability. Anne Montgomery House, she says, echoes a model once far more common in American cities.

Sister Claire Pratt, 86, and Sister Diane Roche, 76, host a final goodbye celebration at Anne Montgomery House.

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“In the late 19th century and early 20th century, a large share of young adults in U.S. cities lived in boarding houses,” Ellen said. “We don’t have that option anymore.”

Boarding and rooming houses typically offered inexpensive rooms, meals and shared common spaces for workers and newcomers to cities. A related model, the single-room occupancy (SRO) building, let residents live more independently while sharing facilities such as kitchens. A 2025 analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts found the number of SRO units in the U.S. dropped by roughly 1 million between 1960 and 2020.

Ellen says the stakes extend well beyond the people looking for housing.

“If cities don’t allow their housing stocks to grow and don’t accommodate a variety of different housing types, then it’s going to make it very difficult for them to attract workers,” Ellen said.

Many of the nation’s most productive industries are concentrated in large metro areas, Ellen says. If housing costs continue to price young people out, she warns, “it’s potentially a threat to economic growth for the country as a whole.”

The last night

As the sun sets over Anne Montgomery House, former residents and friends stream through the front door for one last celebration. The kitchen buzzes as volunteers carry in trays of Creole dishes and barbecue while one of the sisters stirs a large cooler of lemon margaritas. Old friends embrace, refill plates and pick up conversations that feel as though they never ended. Nearby, a small group gathers around an acoustic guitarist, singing Amazing Grace and This Little Light of Mine.

Later, Bulman joins Sister Roche as she leads the former residents in a traditional Greek circle dance, weaving hand-in-hand through the house as laughter echoes from room to room.

Former residents and friends of Anne Montgomery House prepare to dance a traditional Greek dance at the home’s farewell celebration in Washington, D.C., on July 31, 2026.

Charlotte Kesl for NPR

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Charlotte Kesl for NPR

“She definitely has the most moxie of any person I think I’ve ever met,” Bulman said of Roche.

Upstairs, Funmilayo Erinfolami packs the last of her belongings into cardboard boxes. Autographed photos of NASA astronauts, including Jeremy Hansen, hang above her desk, reminders of the dream that brought her halfway around the world to study space physics, with hopes to work at NASA one day.

When she arrived in Washington, Fumi knew almost no one. Her family was thousands of miles away in Nigeria. Then she walked through the front door of Anne Montgomery House.

“It felt so fresh, so welcoming,” she said.

“These women became my family.”

She struggles to imagine leaving it behind.

Funmilayo Erinfolami, a space physicist who is earning her Ph.D., is pictured in her room at Anne Montgomery House in Washington, D.C., on July 31, 2026.

Charlotte Kesl for NPR

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Charlotte Kesl for NPR

“I was so sad,” she said of learning the house would close. “I wanted to cry.” Erinfolami is still looking for an affordable place near her university as she finishes school.

Soon, Roche will leave a bustling house filled with young women for an apartment where she will live alone.

One of the things she’ll miss most is Friday nights watching Netflix with the young women in the house. She’s already wondering who she’ll watch her favorite shows and movies — like KPop Demon Hunters — with now.

Some parts of the transition she welcomes. She laughs that she won’t miss shopping for a household of eight or wondering where everything disappeared to.

“I will not mind having everything stay where I put it,” she said.

But Roche does not see the move as retirement. She plans to keep working with refugees in Washington and, eventually, hopes to serve in Mexico or along the border and keep improving her Spanish.

“Nuns never retire,” she said.

But she knows an apartment and a home are not the same thing.