After losing his job at the U.S. Forest Service, Cameron McKenzie was worried about finding a new job. But first, he had a more immediate concern: How was he going to pay the mortgage?
He’s done the math — finding another job in the environmental sector could take months — and keeping up with the nearly $2,700 monthly payment on his three-bedroom home in Blairstown, N.J., will be a challenge, if not impossible. “Even on unemployment,” said Mr. McKenzie, 27, who worked as a community engagement specialist, “I’m not going to be able to make my mortgage payment.”
Mr. McKenzie’s termination was among thousands of federal job cuts, part of a purge of the work force under an executive order signed by President Trump. The abrupt firings have left federal workers and contractors throughout the country in flux, with many distressed over their housing.
The effect of the layoffs has been palpable, especially in the Washington area, where there are more than 300,000 federal government employees. Rumors have swirled that the firings are causing the area’s housing market to crash after videos began circulating on social media.
Lisa Sturtevant, the chief economist at Bright MLS, a multiple listing service, said that it is too soon to tell if the D.C. market has been shaken by the layoffs because “it hasn’t had enough time to filter into the housing market,” she said. In the first two weeks of February, there were 2,829 new listings in the D.C. area, which is “virtually unchanged” from the same time period last year, with 2,820 listings, according to a report by Bright MLS. During the week that ended Feb. 23, the number of new listings were up 12.9 percent over the same period last year, according to another report by Bright MLS.
Workers like Mr. McKenzie are already rethinking their futures in terms of their careers and where they will live.
“I’m going to have to sell my house,” he said.
As a presidential management fellow who started his job in February 2024, Mr. McKenzie was still on probation, and Mr. Trump’s order has been carried out by targeting the most recent hires who do not receive the same protections as more veteran federal employees. An estimated 200,000 workers are considered probationary employees, which means they had worked for the federal government for less than a year. As of Feb. 20, at least 19,340 probationary employees had been cut, according to a tally by The New York Times.
Landing a government job has long been viewed as a path to job security, economic stability and upward mobility. As of March 2024, around half of federal workers made between $50,000 and $109,999, according to the Pew Research Center, which relied on data from the Office of Personnel Management. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers in the United States was $1,192, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shernice Mundell, who was recently fired from the Office of Personnel Management, said her monthly mortgage on her townhouse in Edgewood, Md., is $1,200 and took up about one-third of her biweekly paycheck, she said.
But she thought she had a secure future ahead of her. She was first hired in August 2024 in the disputed claims department and became a health insurance specialist in November 2024, after that position opened up and her supervisor referred her to that job.
“I was on the track to do what I set out to do,” said Ms. Mundell, 47, who is a Local 32 union member of the American Federation of Government Employees. “But now everything is all upside down.”
Her mortgage for this month is already paid for, but she’s still unsure about how to pay it for March. She has filed for unemployment assistance, which she said would cover her mortgage but not other expenses like utilities, her phone bill and HOA fees.
While she waits to hear if her unemployment benefits are granted, she has some funds in savings, as well as friends and family who are willing to help her. “I’m not completely afraid that I’m going to be homeless,” she said.
Still, it’s a jarring turn of events.
She bought her home as a single mother with three children in 2013 for $103,000, which she called “a huge accomplishment.”
She’s currently applying for new jobs and hopes something will pop up soon. She still wants to move. “It’s still my dream,” she said. “This is like the first chapter of my life. The way I see it, I still have another chapter to live.”
Nathan Barrera-Bunch, who was a management analyst at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, worries that he is now farther away from not only renting a nicer apartment, but also owning a home.
He said he and his fiancé currently live in a small basement apartment in Northwest D.C., moving there in 2020 because it was larger than their last place, and the rent was around the same, $2,000 a month, which the two split equally. Buying a home wasn’t an immediate priority, but he was still putting money away to hopefully start a family and buy a home one day.
But Mr. Barrera-Bunch, 36, said losing his job will eat into their savings. “There’s sort of all these dominoes that are starting to fall in an already expensive place to live in,” he said. “And so, this has upended our plans for housing and home and buying and all of that.”
He recalled visiting the nation’s capital for the first time at 18, and hoping to live there one day. He’s lived in Washington full time for just over 10 years now. “This is home now,” he said.
But staying in Washington might not be feasible. It all depends, he said, on whether his fiancé, who still works for the federal government, can keep his job and if Mr. Barrera-Bunch can find a new one. If they move, they could move to Puerto Rico or Florida, where his fiancé has family living.
For now, like many others, the uncertainty lingers, and he will just have to wait and see what happens. Mr. Barrera-Bunch said that he believes he will be OK and will hopefully find a job somewhere, but he is more concerned about people who don’t have other means of support.
“I’m fearful for the stability of the community here in D.C.,” he said. “There’s so many different communities that people are connected to in D.C., and so many of those are just about to be very, very disrupted.”
Mr. McKenzie, who worked at the U.S. Forest Service, said he and his husband are planning to list their New Jersey home — which his husband first purchased in 2022 for $215,000 — in May, when there’s more greenery to make it more attractive to potential buyers.
“It meant a lot for us to have accomplished something that not many people in our age group had accomplished by such an early point in our lives,” he said. “And then now, it kind of feels like we’re walking that accomplishment back a little bit.”
Though they used to split the mortgage payments, Mr. McKenzie took on the task when his husband started law school. He estimated that around half of his $87,000 salary was going toward the payments and a construction loan the couple took out to cover renovations.
They now plan to rent for a year and then figure something out. Mr. McKenzie said he and his husband have enough savings for about two months, but most of it is being put toward getting the house ready to sell. He said his brother-in-law recently moved in with them and pays them rent. Having that help, he said, is “like the only reason I wouldn’t be out on the street.”
As a presidential management fellow at the U.S. Forest Service, Mr. McKenzie was on a two-year probation. He thought he was in the clear with his prestigious position — the agency only hires 12 to 15 fellows per year.
His one-year work anniversary was Feb. 10. He was fired a week later.
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