Velle Perkins, a Ward 1 resident, has long had to be strategic to feed her family, visiting food banks like Bread for the City and Martha’s Table, and shopping at discount grocery stores like Walmart, Lidl, and Dollar Tree. Last month, she had to stop working because of a health condition, she said, forcing her to squeeze her budget even tighter.
“Every day, I don't know what I'm gonna have to pick and choose,” said 53-year-old Perkins.
More and more D.C. residents are in the same boat, according to a report from Capital Area Food Bank that came out today. The 2026 Hunger Report showed that food insecurity in the D.C. region is worse than it’s been in five years — worse even than around the height of the pandemic.
According to the report, 38% of households in the greater Washington region — which includes D.C. and nearby counties in Maryland and Virginia — experienced food insecurity over the past year, compared to 36% in the previous year’s report, an increase resulting from a combination of low-income residents like Perkins continuing to struggle and other households experiencing food insecurity for the first time, including laid-off federal workers.
“This is serious,” said Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of Capital Area Food Bank. “There's just no other way to slice it.” She added that some households are making twice or even three times the poverty level, even while individuals work multiple jobs. “It continues to strike me how thin a margin many families have, because of this increase in cost of living in our area.”
D.C. itself was among the hardest-hit areas in the region, according to the data. Out of seven counties surveyed, the 2026 Hunger Report found that the District had the third-highest rate of food insecurity at 39%, topped by Prince William County in Virginia and Prince George’s County in Maryland at 47% and 56%, respectively.
“There are tens of thousands of D.C. residents that are really struggling,” said Tazra Mitchell, chief policy and strategy officer at D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, a progressive tax and budget research organization. “They're doing their very best to get by, but the economy is just working against them.”
Much of this, Mitchell said, is the consequence of federal decisions that have hit D.C. residents hard. That includes deep cuts to the federal workforce, an industry that employed over 13% of District residents as of March 2025, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The 2026 Hunger Report found that the D.C. metro area — which included Arlington and Alexandria — lost 104,000 jobs between January 2025 and January 2026, far more than any other major metropolitan area in the country.
There’s also the 2025 passage of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a wide-ranging tax and spending package that included major changes to social safety net programs like SNAP. New provisions mandate that states pick up a much bigger part of the tab for running the nutrition assistance program. It also added work requirements, requiring that a significant number of SNAP recipients prove they’re working at least 80 hours a month or volunteering in an approved program — a change that DCFPI says could result in 1,200 D.C. residents losing their benefits by October.
141,000 D.C. residents, including Perkins, are on SNAP. The minimum monthly benefit for D.C. beneficiaries is $30 a month, and in October 2025, the average monthly amount for a household was $318.
LaMonika Jones, director of D.C. Hunger Solutions, estimated that her organization received a roughly 10% increase in calls from residents seeking assistance in applying for SNAP over the summer. She pointed to the federal workforce layoffs and new work requirements, as well as the October 2025 government shutdown, as the reason for a spike in calls.
Jones said they’re seeing households who haven’t experienced food insecurity in the past now reaching out for help. After the government shutdown, D.C. Hunger Solutions received a call from a furloughed federal worker and new mom who had never applied for SNAP before. “She called us crying because she needed help,” said Jones.
The 2026 Hunger Report found that the price of consumer goods has outpaced average weekly earnings in the D.C. metropolitan area, which means that for many residents, their income just doesn’t go as far as it once did. "As household budgets become increasingly strained, food is often one of the most flexible expenses families can reduce," the report says.
While most food-insecure households are low-income, middle-income households (defined as families making between $92,000 to $183,000) make up 17% of the region’s food-insecure population.
D.C. may not be prepared to respond to this multi-pronged crisis. One of the recommendations in the 2026 Hunger Report is protecting and strengthening local investments in food security. But when Mayor Bowser issued her budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 in April, it included what Mitchell of DCFPI called “the deepest cut to our local safety net program in a generation.” Impacted initiatives included a subsidy program for low- and moderate-income households to access child care, the city’s paid family leave program, the D.C. Food Policy Council, and more.
Muthiah acknowledged the budget pressures faced by the District and surrounding counties. "But you also need to ensure that the situation doesn't continue to devolve into something that's worse," she said. Investing in food security also pays "multiple dividends," she argued, like better health outcomes for people with chronic health conditions and improved life-long outcomes for children.
In the meantime, nonprofits like Capital Area Food Bank are taking their own steps to address rising food insecurity in the region. Last year, the organization distributed 60 million meals. Over the next few years, they’re preparing to distribute an additional 10 to 20 million meals annually.
But nonprofits can’t stabilize D.C. families on their own. Anti-hunger advocates say that it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation: D.C. Council, state agencies, social service and community-based organizations, and the private sector are all needed to address the growing problem.
Muthiah says this situation isn't “inevitable.” She gave the example of the child tax credit: when Congress expanded the benefit in 2021 to provide families some relief during the pandemic, it led to a historic reduction in child poverty.
“We know that investment and positive policies are able to make a really meaningful difference in people's lives,” said Muthiah.
In the meantime, households like Perkins’ are having to make trade-offs, and face the emotional repercussions of doing so. Recently, after a long and busy weekend, she said she wanted to treat herself with a meal. She went to Ledo’s Pizza, where she ordered an iced tea and the value meal: three wings and a personal pizza. But when Perkins saw the total — almost $15 — she felt a powerful guilt.
Holding back tears, she said, “Why do you have to feel like you can't even treat yourself to something, because you're worried about [how] that could have been a pack of toilet paper or some laundry detergent?”
Sam is a reporter with The 51st. She was a multimedia freelance journalist for a year before joining the team. Prior to that, she worked at Vox and More Perfect Union. Sam has covered a wide range of issues, from invasive vines to vaccines.
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