Wealthy DC elites spark boom in poverty-stricken state - while priced-out locals are forced to live in their cars amid a growing backlash

Washington DC's wealthy remote workers are ditching the nation's capital for the country roads of West Virginia - pushing up rent costs in the poverty-stricken state and pricing out locals.

A shift to remote working during the pandemic has enabled DC's top earners to relocate to rural areas and swap cramped apartments in the bustling city for large homes set among mountains and forests.

Migration trends have historically seen people leave the metro area for wealthy counties in Virginia and North Carolina. But demographers have identified a new trend of movement to West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle.

Community groups in these new hotspots say lifelong residents living on the poverty line now face higher rent costs which have left some sleeping in their cars or living in motels.

Maggie Garrido-Cortes, a housing program coordinator for community support organization Telamon, said Berkeley County and its county seat, Martinsburg, have become a 'bedroom community for the D.C. metro area'.

Berkeley County, West Virginia, has become a hotspot for wealthy workers leaving Washington, DC

Martinsburg, in Berkeley County, West Virginia, has had an influx of remote workers from DC

The city is 77 miles from the center of DC, around a one-and-a-half hour drive.  

'We've got a lot of folks [moving in] who are OK with paying $1,200-$1,400 for a one-bedroom apartment,' she told the Register Herald. 'But for your local folks, they aren't able to do that, even with the jobs that are available here.'

She encounters resident 'sleeping in their vehicles' because they can't afford proper accommodation and said there is also a shortage of affordable housing.

'The motels around town are full of families,' said Garrido-Cortes. 'You go in the morning and you'll see the school bus pulling up to pick up children living 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 risen by nearly a fifth since 2014 and average incomes have also increased, thanks in part to the salaries of new arrivals.

But there are many who have lived in the region all their lives and haven't kept pace with the rising costs. Around 1,400 new affordable rental units are needed, according to the Register Heralds' report.

Maggie Garrido-Cortes, a housing program coordinator, said Berkeley County and its county seat, Martinsburg, have become a 'bedroom community for the D.C. metro area'.

Rents in Berkeley County have increased by a quarter since 2018 to $1,122 for a two-bedroom apartment.

Jamila Jones, the president of Innovative Community Solutions, said: 'I understand from an economic development side that we want to be able to attract people to live here.

'But from a community development side, we also need to be creating places where people are able to afford it.'

As community leaders struggle to find solutions - and cash - to solve the housing issues, wealthy builders have also moved in to create expensive developments to cater for the new influx.

About $80 million has been spend to convert a former mill and garment factory into 387 apartments where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom will be up to $1,650 - far beyond what many struggling families can afford.

The trends beckon the slow gentrification of these areas which are conveniently close to DC for hybrid workers.

The rise in migration from DC to West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle is not something that's happened in other parts of the state, where population has stagnated or fallen 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 looks to cleaner energy.

That means that outside of the new Eastern Panhandle hotspots for those who move from DC, much of the state feels left behind entirely as America's economy has ballooned in recent decades.

The shift to remote work during the pandemic has enabled wealthy workers in DC and other metro areas to relocate to remote towns but keep their high-paid jobs

Aerial view of Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia, a state which has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country but has recently drawn wealthy workers from Washington, DC

In those areas, they also face a brain-drain of academically successful young people who leave to find better-paid jobs and opportunities.

William Franko, a political scientist at West Virginia University, told the New York Times that he's taught many students who leave despite their desire to stay.

'Most West Virginians love the state. But I think they look at the economic landscape, and they say, 'I don't see how I can make it work,' he said.

West Virginia was the only US state where the child poverty rate increased between 2021 and 2022, from 20.7 percent to 25 percent, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. 

The state's overall official poverty rate, including adults and children was 17.9 percent, or nearly 309,000 people, the third highest in the country.

In 2022, the average household income was $52,560 compared to a national average of $74,580. For Washington D.C., the average household income was $101,722.

Academics have noted that at the outset of the pandemic in 2020, affluent DC residents were moving to wealthier Virginia counties like Loudoun and Culpeper, which are both a couple of hours from the capital, they're now choosing areas in West Virginia.

Loudoun is one of the wealthiest counties in the country and Culpeper also has above-average household incomes.

'After COVID, we've seen relatively little migration to places like Loudoun, it's going much further out,' VA demographer Hamilton Lombard told WTOP. 

He singled out Berkeley County, adding: 'The median home price is half to a third that of Fairfax [County in Virginia], and they're building more new homes right now than Fairfax is.

'That's been one of the big destinations, places like that really on the outer periphery of the D.C. metro area and beyond, that have often been some of the biggest gainers.' 

He said 'a lot of people who might accept a job with the federal government don't need to move to D.C.' because of the shift towards remote work.

'How far out you see people moving from the D.C. area is really striking,' he added. 

Analysis of the Census Bureau's 2023 population estimates found people are leaving large metro areas for rural communities in large numbers nationwide, continuing a trend which took hold during the pandemic.

The analysis, by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, found 'migration out of counties with more than one million residents in 2023 remained nearly twice as high as before the pandemic'.

'Migration into the country's smallest metro areas and rural counties rose in 2023 from already near record levels in 2022,' it added.

The report added that populations of major metro areas actually began to stall in the 2010s as the cost of living grew, pricing out many would-be city dwellers.

The recent acceleration of migration from built-up areas was fueled by the rise in work from home, especially in high-paid sector like tech.

'With a third of workdays being done remotely in 2023, Americans have more geographic flexibility and have been increasingly willing to move far from large population centers if their destination offers a good quality of life,' said the report. 

'Communities that have easy access to outdoor recreation opportunities have seen a spike in the number of people moving to them.'