Capital Area Food Bank report finds DMV food insecurity at five-year high | The Locally Times
Published · The Locally Times
The Capital Area Food Bank's Hunger Report 2026 found 38% of DMV households food insecure, a five-year high.
The Capital Area Food Bank's Hunger Report 2026 found that food insecurity in the Greater Washington region has reached a five-year high, with 38% of households not always knowing where their next meal would come from. The report, based on a survey of nearly 4,000 individuals conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, said the region is experiencing higher levels of hunger than near the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in the report's history, under half of households – 49% – were categorized as highly food secure, a drop of 10 percentage points since 2022. In every county across the Greater Washington region last year, at least 1 in 5 households were food insecure, ranging from 22% in Arlington, Va., to 56% in Prince George's County, Md. The only county to show a decline was Montgomery County, Md., where food insecurity dropped from 35% to 31%, though that change was within the survey's margin of error. Non-white households experience food insecurity at rates two to three times higher than white households, and 34% of children in the DMV lived in food insecure households in the last year. The report attributes the deterioration to dramatic job losses, higher costs of living, and a record-setting federal government shutdown. Among respondents, 44% reported that their finances have gotten worse in the last year, up from 35% in 2022, and more than one-third cited negative changes in the economy as a key reason. The region faced the most dramatic job losses of any metro area in the country, with 100,000 jobs eliminated.