National Guard<\/a>, has been particularly impacted. According to the survey, about two-thirds of D.C. residents said their household had been directly affected by the job cuts, one of the highest percentages in the region.<\/p>\nFederal job cuts impacted higher-income households<\/p>\n
More affluent households were hit especially hard by the cuts, the survey found. A majority \u2014 58% \u2014 of those in households with an annual income of $90,000 or more said they were impacted by the reductions, compared to 48% of lower-income households.<\/p>\n
Trumbull earned over $130,000 annually at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After DOGE came for her job, she took a deferred resignation in the second-round offering, under threat of a forthcoming USDA reorganization that wasn\u2019t really a decent option. She only secured new, part-time employment a year later.<\/p>\n
During that time, she had to take a forbearance on her mortgage. She applied for public assistance. She and her husband took home just $2,000 a month, she said, while amassing debt from their home ownership.<\/p>\n
When jobs didn\u2019t come through, she did some contract work and taught to \u201ccobble together enough money to make sure my kids were supplied \u2014 cause you don\u2019t get to stop buying diapers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see a future where I can go back to not worrying about moving money around constantly\u201d to cover bills, she said.<\/p>\n
Even though lower-income residents were less likely to report any impacts, the survey suggests that hardship was still acute among this group. About 1 in 10, 14%, DMV residents say that they or someone in their household accessed social services like food banks or job placement support for the first time in the past year, which rose to about one-quarter of those in households earning less than $90,000 per year.<\/p>\n
Many residents worry about housing payments and healthcare<\/p>\n
About one-third of DMV residents say they are \u201cvery\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d worried about being able to pay their rent or mortgage, down from about half in 2023 following the economic troubles of the COVID pandemic. Renters, Black and Hispanic adults, and lower-income residents are particularly worried about housing payments. <\/p>\n
Nataro, 42, and a single mom of two young children, asked her landlord for a rent reduction after she lost her job at USAID, one of DOGE’s first targets. She signed up for food stamps and unemployment assistance. She found work in academia quickly but took a substantial pay cut.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very humbling, because you know before that you\u2019re paying all your bills and struggling but you\u2019ve got enough to cover everything,\u201d she said. Now, she has had to ask for help. <\/p>\n
Roughly 2 in 10 DMV residents say there were times in the past year when they couldn’t pay for healthcare, according to the survey. Nataro said she has had to make tough choices on her personal healthcare needs to cut costs. <\/p>\n
Danielle Yates, the managing director of marketing and communications at the Greater Washington Community Foundation, said the survey found that a significant number of people in the region had trouble taking care of their basic needs.<\/p>\n
About 1 in 10 DMV residents say they couldn’t provide adequate shelter or housing for their family the past year, according to the survey, and roughly 2 in 10 say there were times when they couldn’t pay for food. <\/p>\n
A Capital Area Food Bank survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago last year also found broad food insecurity. \u201cThirty-eight percent of our area\u2019s residents said that they needed some support in putting food on their tables so that they could lead an active and healthy lifestyle,\u201d said Radha Muthiah, executive director of the CAFB.<\/p>\n
Views of the local job market have dimmed<\/p>\n
Residents’ perceptions of the local job market are much less optimistic than just a few years ago. Only about half of DMV residents rate the availability of good jobs where they live as \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood,” down from 65% in 2023. <\/p>\n
Those who have found work say they’ve been left with the scars of DOGE’s ruthlessness. <\/p>\n
A job Nataro loved and felt made a difference in the world was taken away, leaving her \u201ctraumatized.\u201d<\/p>\n
“I haven\u2019t taken any real personal effects to the office. We haven\u2019t really unboxed things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some consider leaving the region<\/p>\n
Rising costs and housing also influence how DMV residents think about the region, in addition to the job cuts.<\/p>\n
About one-third of DMV residents expect that living conditions in the Washington area will be \u201cworse\u201d in the next five years, while about half think they will be \u201cabout the same.\u201d Only about 2 in 10 expect things will get better.<\/p>\n
About 1 in 10 D.C. residents, 14%, say they are considering leaving the DMV region in the next year, with most who are thinking about departing pointing to rising costs and housing expenses.<\/p>\n
Barbera and her husband both worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a place where the staff was fired twice because of court decisions. A year and a half after they were fired in March 2025, the couple are considering leaving the area because of rising costs, especially childcare for their three children. Although both have full-time jobs and do consulting work part time, they are earning half of what they did, said Barbera. <\/p>\n
The two had worked a collective 30 years for the peace-focused organization when they were let go. She said she feels lucky because they have family support and jobs but are being forced into considering a different future. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the only place they\u2019ve lived,\u201d Barbera said of her children. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to leave. But we have to have the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story was first published on Sept. 24, 2026. It was published again on Sept. 25, 2026, to correct Nicoletta Barbera said that she and her husband have full-time jobs and do consulting work part time, not that she and her husband have full-time jobs doing consulting work.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The VoicesDMV analysis is based on a mail survey of U.S. adults aged 18 and older living in the Greater Washington Region using random address-based sampling. The survey of 2,801 residents was conducted Feb. 9 to April 6, 2026. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Sam Trumbull once wrote public assistance policy to help people receiving food assistance, then needed public assistance for her family. Amanda Nataro won’t take personal effects to her new job, after being crushed by the sudden end of her last one. Nicoletta Barbera and her husband are considering leaving the area because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":9171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"guid":"05001700-14e4-4fb4-a2dd-c588e18acf45","_duplicate_post":false,"rank_math_canonical_url":"","source":"The Associated Press","byline":"Gary Fields And Linley Sanders","published":"2026-09-23 21:09:12","updated":"2026-09-25 08:11:17","_infotelid":"","_prepressid":"","_multisite_post_sync":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1737,1738],"tags":[],"region":[1835],"class_list":["post-9170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-world","region-world"],"post_modified":"2026-09-25T08:15:07","post_modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:15:07","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/inhome-8435c5f999dafe97e6c043b8df52a3e13559242526fe961eee1ed4883fa48410.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9179,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9170\/revisions\/9179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9170"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=9170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}