It is expensive to live here

Just a quick pointer to the Post article about how much it costs to live in the DC metro region at “subsistance” levels. The source of the study is by Wider Opportunities for Women and you can read the full report there. All 97 pages of it. Read page 5 to see what all they calculated.
The amount given for the District of Columbia for a family consisting of one adult, assume single mom, an infant and a pre-schooler is $53,634. Kids are at their most expensive before they’re shoved off to school. Daycare for an infant, way more expensive than an out of diapers pre-schooler. But there are other factors that make being self-sufficent AND at the subsistance level in DC expensive.
People can and do live on less because of various programs that cut down on the price of living here. We pretty much know about various housing programs, such as section 8, but in an earlier article in the Post, the number of affordable housing units is dwindling. In my neighborhood alone several homes that were affordable rentals got fixed up and sold, at some point. Before I bought, the crumbly pile of bricks I call home used to be home to a woman and her mentally disabled son. It was affordable when I bought it. But not all houses fixed up were taken off the affordable housing roster. One house, because it was overpriced wound up becoming a rental. A vacant house was “fixed up” and must be affordable because the jobs the residents have are fast food jobs. The house where the resident crackhead stays gets a new paint job everyso often but never gets sold. There are houses on the block that remain in the affordable housing scene, but not as many as when I moved here.