Washington, DC’s wealthy remote workers are abandoning the nation’s capital for the rural roads of West Virginia, driving up rental costs in the poverty-stricken state and shutting out locals.
The shift to remote work during the pandemic has allowed D.C.’s highest earners to move to rural areas and trade cramped apartments in the bustling city for large homes nestled among mountains and forests.
Historically, migration trends have caused people to leave the metropolitan area for the wealthy counties of Virginia and North Carolina. But demographers have identified a new trend of movement toward West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.
Community groups in these new hotspots say longtime residents living on the poverty line now face higher rental costs, which has left some sleeping in their cars or living in motels.
Maggie Garrido-Cortes, housing program coordinator for the community support organization Telamon, said Berkeley County and its county seat, Martinsburg, have become a “bedroom community for the DC metropolitan area.”
Berkeley County, West Virginia, has become a hotspot for wealthy workers leaving Washington, D.C.
Martinsburg, in Berkeley County, West Virginia, has had an influx of remote workers from DC
The city is 77 miles from downtown DC, about an hour and a half drive.
“We have a lot of people (moving) who are okay with paying $1,200 to $1,400 for a one-bedroom apartment,” he told the newspaper. Register Herald. “But local people can’t do that, even with the jobs available here.”
He encounters residents “sleeping in their vehicles” because they cannot afford adequate accommodation and said there is also a shortage of affordable housing.
“The motels in the city are full of families,” Garrido-Cortés said. ‘You go in the morning and you will see the school bus stopping to pick up the children who live there. “It’s almost at crisis level.”
The population of West Virginia’s eastern Panhandle, which includes Berkeley County and Jefferson and Morgan counties, has increased by nearly a fifth since 2014 and median incomes have also increased, thanks in part to the wages of newcomers.
But there are many who have lived in the region all their lives and have not been able to keep up with rising costs. About 1,400 new affordable rental units are needed, according to the Register Heralds report.
Maggie Garrido-Cortes, housing program coordinator, said Berkeley County and its seat, Martinsburg, have become a “bedroom community for the DC metropolitan area.”
Rents in Berkeley County have increased by a quarter since 2018 to $1,122 for a two-bedroom apartment.
Jamila Jones, president of Innovative Community Solutions, said: ‘I understand that from an economic development point of view, we want to attract people to live here.
“But from a community development standpoint, we also need to create places where people can afford it.”
As community leaders scramble to find solutions – and cash – to solve housing problems, wealthy developers have also stepped in to create expensive developments to serve the new influx.
Some $80 million has been spent converting a former clothing factory and mill into 387 apartments where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home will be up to $1,650, far more than many struggling families can afford.
Trends point to slow gentrification of these areas that are conveniently close to DC for hybrid workers.
The increase in migration from DC to eastern West Virginia is not something that has happened in other parts of the state, where the population has stagnated or declined and poverty rates and incomes have struggled to improve.
The state’s economy is dominated by coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. But the industry has been in decline as the world seeks cleaner energy.
That means that outside of the Eastern Panhandle’s new hotspots for those moving from D.C., much of the state feels completely abandoned as the U.S. economy has soared in recent decades.
The shift to remote work during the pandemic has allowed wealthy workers in D.C. and other metropolitan areas to move to remote cities but keep their high-paying jobs.
Aerial view of the Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia, a state that has one of the highest poverty rates in the country but has recently attracted wealthy workers from Washington, DC.
In those areas, they also face a brain drain of academically successful young people leaving in search of better-paying jobs and opportunities.
William Franko, a political scientist at West Virginia University, told the New York Times that he has taught many students who leave despite their desire to stay.
‘Most West Virginians love the state. But I think they look at the economic picture and say, ‘I don’t see how I can make this work,'” he said.
West Virginia was the only U.S. state where the child poverty rate increased between 2021 and 2022, from 20.7 percent to 25 percent, according to the West Virginia Budget and Policy Center.
The state’s official overall poverty rate, including adults and children, was 17.9 percent, or nearly 309,000 people, the third highest in the country.
In 2022, the median household income was $52,560 compared to a national average of $74,580. In Washington DC, the median household income was $101,722.
Scholars have noted that at the start of the pandemic in 2020, wealthy D.C. residents were moving to wealthier Virginia counties like Loudoun and Culpeper, both within a couple of hours of the capital, and are now choosing areas in West Virginia. .
Loudoun is one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and Culpeper also has above-average household incomes.
“Post-COVID, we’ve seen relatively little migration to places like Loudoun, but it’s going much further,” said VA demographer Hamilton Lombard. WTOP.
He highlighted Berkeley County and added: ‘The median home price is half to one-third that of Fairfax (Virginia County), and they are building more new homes than Fairfax right now.
“That’s been one of the big destinations, places like that really on the outer fringes of the DC metro area and beyond, that have often been some of the biggest winners.”
He said that “many people who could take a job in the federal government don’t need to move to D.C.” because of the shift toward remote work.
“It’s really amazing how far you see people moving from the DC area,” he added.
Analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2023 population estimates found that large numbers of people across the country are leaving large metropolitan areas for rural communities, continuing a trend that took hold during the pandemic.
The analysis, conducted by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, found that “migration out of counties with more than one million residents in 2023 remained nearly double what it was before the pandemic.”
“Migration to the country’s metropolitan areas and smaller rural counties increased in 2023 from already near record levels in 2022,” he added.
The report adds that the populations of major metropolitan areas actually began to stagnate in the 2010s as the cost of living rose, shutting out many would-be city dwellers.
The recent acceleration of migration from urbanized areas was driven by the rise of working from home, especially in high-paying sectors such as technology.
“With one-third of the workday done remotely by 2023, Americans have more geographic flexibility and are increasingly willing to move away from large population centers if their destination offers a good quality of life,” the report notes. .
“Communities that have easy access to outdoor recreation opportunities have seen an increase in the number of people moving there.”