Over 500K D.C. residents living over the poverty line can't afford basics.
Sabrina Hopps is an American in the middle.
She works a decent job, but struggles with basic expenses — one of a growing number of people across the country and in the nation’s capital who work but can’t save, invest or thrive.
And in our nation, we’re shockingly good at disregarding the middle.
Our political discourse tacks to extremes, even though polling repeatedly affirms that most of us are moderates.
The coasts dominate culture and conversation. The middle of America? That’s flyover country!
(Our widening obesity index suggests we’re ignoring our own middles, too.)
What people is this category want is a piece of the American Dream — bills paid, a home, solid health care — in exchange for their continued work at one of the honest but unglamorous jobs that keep us going. They are health-care aides, cashiers, janitors, office managers, line cooks. And they are falling behind.
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In D.C. they number at least half a million, according to an analysis from the United Way of the National Capital Area. They are people above the federal poverty line but below the minimum $101,281 annually the organization estimates people needed to afford basics such as housing, food, transportation, health care and child care.
And nobody is talking about them.
Hopps, who worked in hospitals for decades, who just got a nice promotion, who is about to turn 50 and is sharing an apartment with an adult son so they can split the rent, who brings breakfast and lunch to work because it’s too expensive to eat out, is also struggling to hold on to her American Dream.
“What American Dream?” She said. “I’m born and raised in Washington, D.C., and I don’t qualify for anything that helps me to stay in my city, the city where I work.”
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These are the folks of Americana, the hard-working people who rarely make it into the Washington conversations — or most imaginations — about need. Thanks to inflation, the impact of the pandemic on workers, and rent increases that spiked by double digits over the past two years, that group is growing.
“In these conversations, people tend to think ‘below the poverty line.’ We’re bringing awareness to this forgotten middle,” said Rosie Allen-Herring, president and CEO of the United Way of the National Capital Area. “What do you do when you’re in the middle? These are our neighbors and family members, these are individuals living paycheck to paycheck, one emergency away from poverty.”
There’s another thing to consider about these workers in health care, child care, hospitality or retail. They gained a new title during the pandemic: essential.
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Hopps was profiled in The Washington Post as one of the health-care workers who were the heroes of the pandemic as the coronavirus chilled the nation. They got plenty of kudos, but their bravery wasn’t rewarded with more money or better working conditions and many left. Since 2020, 1 in 5 health-care professionals have quit, according to a report by Definitive Healthcare.
“I participated in all the [protective measures] we had in place, to keep my family safe,” said Hopps, who was terrified about getting covid but stayed at work. “When I got home, I took my clothes off. I lived with my daughter, granddaughter and son, and we all suffer from asthma,” she said. But she didn’t stop working.
“I was there for the patients, because once covid hit, we were the only companions for all those people at the time,” she said. “We were there for them when no one else could visit.”
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For years, she earned a little more than $14 an hour as a health-care maintenance worker. That has kept her just above the federal poverty line — $26,500, an antiquated standard adjusted annually but established in 1963. It doesn’t account for the way life since then has changed, the way you also need a computer, a mobile phone and in most cases a car to stay employed and engaged.
And that hits hard in the D.C. region — consistently listed as one of the priciest places in the nation to live — especially among the population of federal workers, long thought to be set for life in a good job. Many aren’t making six figures. Add inflation and two or three paychecks missed because of a government shutdown, and they’d be in trouble.
“We tend to think of this region with such largesse,” said Allen-Herring. “We’ve got high incomes, we’re the fittest, highest educated.”
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Yet food pantries in the area are seeing more federal workers, Allen-Herring said. United Way research showed that 63 percent of the folks in D.C. who received food stamps in 2021 were at or above the poverty line — they were families in the middle.
These are the folks that Congress needs to see when we’re talking about the minimum wage, about health care and assistance — not just the ones who fell off the cliff, but the ones barely hanging on.
“It’s not just the homeless veteran suffering from PTSD, living under a bridge,” Allen-Herring said. “It’s more than that. “What we’re seeing is a mismatch between earnings and the increasing cost of basic necessities.”
Hopps recently got a job offer. She’ll make a little more. And she hopes inflation will ease so she can use the extra money to build a firmer foundation.
“Yeah, I’m going to keep dreaming,” she said. “I want to own my own home. So my kids and grandkids always have someplace to visit.”
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