Laid Off Thanks to DOGE, Then Taken for $14.7k

I don’t have to tell you that we live in an era defined by cruelty and cowardice, but it’s possible that more people need to hear this corollary: its continuation relies on our complicity. We’re told that the cost of refusing to accommodate appalling behavior would be too high—say, to the tune of $15k—but I refuse to believe that’s true. I’m asking my community to make it possible for me to push back against cruelty without getting financially destroyed.

The short version of what happened is this: at the end of February, I was laid off by my employer, an anti-poverty think tank called MDRC . DOGE cuts had cost them large contracts (example in screenshot 1; I’d post more but that DOGE site is impossible to navigate), and I was devastated but hardly shocked. Then, on April 2nd, MDRC management pulled a bait-and-switch on their severance offer, which is going to be ruinous for me in terms of medical expenses. I learned this same day that the subletter at my former apartment— which I left when arthritis made it difficult to handle the stairs— had never completed the lease transfer as we’d agreed, because she was over two months’ behind on rent, on my lease. In the span of a few hours, I was out nearly $15,000.

I could have decided to be cruel and cowardly and come out of this situation without as much financial loss. I could have chosen to take a woman who can’t pay rent to court for $5,663 and obtain a judgment that would garnish her wages. I promised her I wouldn’t do that so long as she leaves by the end of this month, and she’s agreed. I could have signed an offer for a greatly reduced severance payment of $6.5k that would also function as an NDA, making it far riskier for me to be a whistleblower re: my former employer’s underhanded and cruel behavior. I refused.

I will not name and shame the woman who chose to hide the fact that she wasn’t paying rent, because I know that poverty is punishment enough. If, however, you would like to contact MDRC on their new Instagram account I helped them set up, or on the Xitter account I urged them to abandon, or on their LinkedIn or Facebook, I encourage you to do so. Please do not name me, let alone tag me (I don’t need HR gawking at my socials), but you can politely let them know how you feel about an anti-poverty organization pushing their former employees, plural, into poverty (again, politely— this is not the fault of my former colleagues who run comms, after all).

And please donate to help me cover my medical and housing expenses while I’m unemployed. Without your help, I will be living off of credit cards and loans by the end of May and digging myself a hole even deeper than $15k that I will never be able to climb out of. Please help me be brave without it ruining my life.

THE LONG VERSION:

The subletter: I was diagnosed with inflammatory arthritis in October after five months of rapid symptom onset that crippled my hands and feet (screenshot 2. You may have heard me talk about having rheumatoid arthritis, and that’s the most likely suspect, but it’s as yet officially undetermined whether this is seronegative RA, early signs of lupus, or some novel post-COVID autoimmune condition. I may not know for years depending on symptom progression). I lived in a six-story walk-up studio, and this was only the latest of a number of chronic illnesses that made those stairs difficult to navigate. It was clear I needed to move, and the NYC real estate market moves quickly. I found a rent-stabilized apartment in November, with fewer stairs that were not as steep, and best of all, it was twice as large but only cost slightly more. I knew had to jump on it right away, and so I set about finding a subletter for my existing lease.

An acquaintance told me his friend had just moved from down south and was staying with him while looking for her own place in the city. She worked freelance and couldn’t prove her income, but because I’d been in a similar situation for most of my twenties and relied on sublets for housing, and because I knew someone willing to vouch for her, I accepted the referral. That was my first mistake. I told this woman that I frankly wasn’t sure my lease allowed subletting but highly doubted anyone would notice, as the landlord was usually MIA. I sent her a copy of the lease to review, and she decided to move in.

My second mistake was in thinking my landlord would remain MIA when there was an opportunity for him to squeeze money out of someone. Evidently, he had installed security cameras in the lobby, watched me move my furniture out, and then called to let me know he’d file for eviction (against me on paper, though obviously the subletter she would be the one forced to move), unless we both agreed for me to transfer my lease to her. This would allow him to raise the rent.

I could kick myself for underestimating the scuminess of a Manhattan slumlord, so I did everything I could to help this subletter. I offered her her one month’s rent back if she wanted to leave. I offered to let her stay with me in my new, surprisingly cheap 2-bed for free if she wanted to leave and have her own room but needed more time to find a place. She didn’t want to leave, so I offered to help her get on the lease. I offered to pay forward the security deposit and to pay the $330 difference between what my rent had been and what her new rent would be, and I took out a personal loan to afford it. Eventually, we worked out a deal with the landlord that she could get on the lease if I would agree to be her guarantor. Fine, I thought, that is essentially what a sublet is anyway. I thought I’d paid sufficiently for my mistakes. (Major points of this are reiterated in screenshots of later conversations; see below).

Throughout these months of negotiation, the landlord would not accept rent payments from me nor from her; she was to hold onto the rent until the new lease agreement was finalized. I signed and sent it back February 20th (screenshot 3). I assumed it was finalized when I heard nothing to the contrary. That is, until I repeatedly contacted the landlord to ask about the security deposit, and he told me that it he would be keeping it because of all the back-rent owed on my lease (screenshot 4). I was stunned. I reached out to the subletter and confirmed with her that she was $3,770 behind in rent—over two months’ worth, with my $660 factored in, or nearly half the time she had been living there (screenshot 5). This is not what she had previously told me (screenshot 6).

I had stuck my neck out for her repeatedly, and she hadn’t been forthcoming with me about this back rent at all. Now I would legally be on the hook for that money. I reached out to our mutual acquaintance to see if he would mediate. He viewed the message but never responded, which leads me to speculate that he knew of her inability to pay and passed her on to me like some sort of horror movie curse (screenshot 7). I told her I could no longer trust her, and I offered that I would not take her to court to try to recover costs she clearly couldn’t pay, on the condition she agree to move out and not drag this fiasco out further. (screenshot 8, which are the key parts of that conversation but rest assured there was much more to it).

She was as furious with me, but she agreed (screenshot 9). We informed the landlord, who also agreed. He asked for an additional month of rent so that he will have time to renovate before a new tenant moves in—something he is well within his rights to do. The total bill for 3+ months amounts to $5,663, though I am nervous about what state she’ll leave the apartment in given how mad she is (hence my fear of losing the deposit and winding up with the $7k total debt I refer to in screenshot 7). So, I am waiting for the landlord to send a final, itemized invoice and will post that screenshot when he does.

I do not want to have to pursue someone for money she clearly doesn’t have; I just want this to be over.

The severance: The subletter was a horribly expensive lesson to learn, but I could have absorbed some of the cost if my former employer had stuck to its promises re: severance. A few hours after learning about the subletter, I learned, to my total shock, that MDRC was not going to honor its word. An anti-poverty research organization pulled a bait-and-switch on me and my former colleagues that would push us into poverty.

Look, I’ve read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, I was aware of the limitations inherent in working for a neoliberal think tank, and I did not expect I would change the world or even the organization. However, I also did not think I would cause harm or be harmed. I believed I could increase the level of participatory research they produced and improve equitable research practices within my department (Youth Development, Criminal Justice, & Employment policy), and I appeared to be succeeding. As Angela Fernandez wrote in “Indigenist Abolition: a Talk Story on Ideas and Strategies for Social Work Practice,” “My first and only Indigenous Professor of social work in my undergraduate program, who’s now retired, said, ‘You won’t change anything, but you’ll have an influence over a number of people for a time, so do what you love.’” This was the spirit with which I tried to move through the world, as person with chronic illness who still needed to earn a living. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a society that rewards even such modest aspirations for having a positive influence at work.

When I got word of looming lay-offs on February 27th, I assumed I would be on the chopping block because I was so new: I’d only been employed for a little less than 18 months. Sure enough, I was told the following day that I was being let go, and that it was not a personal decision but entirely due to DOGE. Myself and 38 former colleagues were placed on paid administrative leave for 3 weeks while our union, SPWU AFSCME Council 57 , negotiated on our behalf. The original severance offer made to me was as follows: $6,497.89 in cash, plus MDRC would cover 3 months of COBRA (valued at $3,898.02) and outplacement services (valued at $2,500) (screenshot 10).

Union leadership followed up on March 20th, at the end of the leave period, to tell us that MDRC was looking into allowing us the choice to convert the cost of COBRA and/or the cost of outplacement services to additional cash (screenshot 11), meaning that instead of receiving $6,497.89, I’d receive somewhere between $8,997.89 and $12,895.91. I decided to pursue this offer; outplacement services weren’t going to be of much benefit when the entire field of research had been devastated, and it would be a safer bet for me to get on the ACA while my income was at its lowest, rather than enjoy 3 months of COBRA then risk having to pay upwards of $500/mo for a terrible Obamacare plan.

I heard nothing further from either the union or MDRC management by March 28th, so, with my insurance about to end, I applied for coverage through NY State of Health and qualified for the lowest tier above Medicaid (screenshot 12). I figured that whatever specialists or prescriptions weren’t covered by this plan, I could pay for with the money I’d soon be receiving from MDRC, so I enrolled (screenshot 13, showing the coverage became effective in March). I have already spent $300 OOP on a visit with my psychiatrist so that I don’t run out of medication before I can find someone who takes this new, worse insurance (I will post the bill once it arrives).

Imagine my shock when I read the email from our union leaders on April 2nd, informing us that MDRC had pulled a bait-and-switch. They’d waited until any of us who were able to get on alternate insurance had done so, THEN informed the union they would not be converting either the cost of COBRA or outplacement services to cash, because—surprise!—they believed the negotiation period had actually ended weeks’ earlier than their words or actions indicated (screenshot 14). So, for every former employee who found other, worse insurance coverage, MDRC was going to save a minimum of $3,900 (employees with longer tenure had been offered more months of COBRA coverage). MDRC waited so long to tell us this, in fact, that I may have to reapply for unemployment insurance, because I couldn’t answer the DOL’s question about how much my severance payout would be. I have no idea when I might start receiving UI.

MDRC’s behavior is so appalling that it is arguably against my professional code of ethics to remain silent about it (and, not that I put much weight in the law, but for the record, it is also illegal.) I informed HR as much (screenshot 15): I can't accept their reduced severance offer that also functions as an NDA. I could have risked accepting the offer and breaking the NDA anyway because their behavior was illegal, but that would land me in a far costlier court battle with an organization that has $170m in assets . Because I was a new employee, I was going to be receiving the least severance of my colleagues, who would have to risk far more to do what I am doing. So, I chose to be brave.

This means that my plan to use severance to cover the costs of specialists and prescriptions not covered by ACA and to pay down this subletter’s debt with the landlord is ruined. I am counting on enough of you being furious about working people getting screwed over to help make up the shortfall. I’m asking for your help to afford to speak out. If you would like to read the ugly details of how MDRC chose to lay off women who were scored higher in their decision-making process than the men, and how they laid off an incredibly disproportionate number of People of Color, read the section at the end.

Prior to my lay-off, I had been implementing an equity review process for all the research products produced by MDRC. It took until this late stage of 2025, at the insistence of a white woman, for this to even begin to happen, and in the end, MDRC’s lack of commitment to equitable practices is still glaringly evident. I’ve included a screenshot of the last email I received from HR (screenshot 16), denying my heartfelt request to please not put me in this position, and I’d like to highlight this particularly galling sentence: “MDRC will not be making any changes to the packages or separation agreements to ensure equity for all impacted employees.” In other words: we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that equity means harming you all the same.

As an organization largely run and staffed by people who have been financially comfortable their entire lives, MDRC lacks the cultural competence to understand how someone in my precarious position could refuse any amount of money offered. They look at people like me— a woman pushed into over a decade of precarity and debt because of chronic illness and its associated medical and housing costs— and believe it will be easy to trick us out of several thousand dollars, push us further into precarity, and we’ll sit back and take it. But this is hardly my first time (or second, or third, or…) wondering how I’ll be paying my bills in two months.

The thing about being poor that MDRC management doesn’t understand, is that the institutional and systemic violence is survivable with the help of community, and while it is indeed traumatizing, it is not the worst thing you can possibly experience. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again. Complicity with organizational practices that perpetuate poverty is far more intolerable to me than launching a GoFundMe (again). So, I will happily stand up and tell the world about MDRC’s slimy move in the hope that they are shamed into behaving better in the future. SPWU has filed an Unfair Labor Practices charge with the NLRB (screenshot 17) for bad-faith bargaining, a violation of labor law, but those of us in employment policy know it’s unlikely to result in any consequences. The court of public opinion is a surer bet.

I’ve set my fundraising goal at the lower end of what I’ve lost: $5,663 thanks to the subletter plus $8,997.89 thanks to MDRC, for a total of $14,660.89. Please help me climb out of this massive hole, survive unemployment long enough to get hired again, and restore my faith in the kindness and generosity of other people as we struggle to resist the morally degrading impacts of authoritarianism together. I promise that if I somehow, some way, am eventually repaid by either the subletter or MDRC, I will pay it forward in turn.

MDRC’S LAYOFF DECISION PROCESS:

Here's the truth of how the lay-off decisions played out, which I was likewise stunned to learn from our union. Yes, these were precipitated by DOGE cuts, but who was chosen for lay-offs had nothing to do with seniority, nor with our yearly performance reviews, nor with which project contracts were cut. Inexplicably, management decided who to lay off by asking each department head to rank employees they rarely interact with on five largely subjective criteria: “skills match,” “versatility,” “independence,” “initiative,” and “leadership/advancement potential.”

I appear to have missed the cut-off by one point after receiving the lowest possible score on leadership/advancement potential, for reasons that don’t seem to have anything to do with my performance reviews, my professional experience, or my education. I’ll let you speculate about why it could be that a chronically ill woman who used up all her sick days last year and took a medical leave for surgery was not considered leadership material.

The union obtained these scores for all bargaining unit members and sent them to us in a spreadsheet, complete with each employee’s gender, race, tenure, title, department, and yearly performance reviews from 2022-2024 (called “performance management program” or “PMP” reviews) (screenshot 18. I don’t want to publish the full sheet of everyone’s data, so I am only sharing my own row. However, if there are any reporters reading this, I’m happy to share an anonymized version on background. PMP rankings are quantified from 1 to 3, with 2 being ‘effective’. I was told that it was unusual for any first-year employee to be ranked higher than that.)

As an employment policy researcher who suddenly had nothing better to do, I decided to apply some formulas in Excel, and the following findings emerged. Whether they are statistically significant given the sample size n=156 is anyone’s guess, since I don’t have access to the kind of software that would let me do that sort of analysis anymore, and I’m very much a qual, not a quant. Regardless of whether the math demonstrates that MDRC’s lay-off decision-making rises to the level of discrimination, it is extremely concerning that they didn’t do any sort of equity analysis of their own to correct for disproportionate impacts. The union is looking into filing a grievance related to this as well. So, without further ado:

• Men and women were both laid off at approximately the expected rates given their percentages of the bargaining unit. However, men were scored a full point lower on average on the five criteria used to determine lay-offs, suggesting female employees were judged more harshly than male employees when it came to deciding who to lay off.

• 100% of bargaining unit employees with 10 or more years of service who were laid off were POC, including the only 2 Asian employees to hit double-digit years of service. This means that the average years of service were higher for Asian employees who were laid-off than for Asian workers in the bargaining unit as a whole—the only racial/ethnic demographic for whom this was true. It remained true despite the fact that white people in the bargaining unit had 1 year greater tenure on average.

• On average, POC who were laid off were scored 1.3 points lower on the five metrics used to determine lay-offs, resulting in remarkably disproportionate lay-offs for POC; even though employees of color made up 48.6% of the bargaining unit, they made up 63.2% of lay-offs.

• Asian women made up only 10.4% of the bargaining unit but constituted 21.1% of layoffs, meaning Asian women were laid off at more than twice the expected rate. In total, half of all Asian women in the bargaining unit were laid off.

• Likewise, Hispanic men made up only 8.4% of the bargaining unit but 13.2% of laid-off employees.

• Women of two or more races were only 3.9% of bargaining unit employees but constituted 7.9% of lay-offs. This indicates that women of two or more races were laid off at a rate nearly 50% greater than expected.

• Overall, Women of Color made up 30.5% of the bargaining unit but 42.2% of laid-off employees, meaning that WOC were laid off at a rate that was over 25% greater than expected.

Again, I’m a qual, not a quant, and I would need someone to check my math, then run some calculations in R/STATA/SAS to tell you how statistically significant any of this is, but I do know it’s incredibly suspect. If I worked in HR and saw this data, I would demand a review of the process before moving forward with lay-offs, but I guess that’s exactly why people like me don’t work in HR.