I was a DLR CPer this last august (left tho).
You pay $849 upfront for a deposit, fee, and rent for the first FOUR weeks. Make sure you keep track of that becuase when you get your first paycheck, they automatically take out of your bank account the NEXT day. NOT out of your paycheck. It caused a few of us to be way over-drawn with our banks... they take out $134 a week for rent.
Be sure to save up a lot of $ beforehand. Its expsenive to live in that area and I came home broke. Depending on your role and park (dca vs. dlr) you can get less hours. I had maybe 12 hrs a week at a whopping $8. Which is what I was making here at home (actually I make more here) and I didn't have to pay the expsneive rent prices or food prices to go shopping.
Bus transportation isn't bad, it was better than having to park at PK2 and walking 3 blocks at 3am to get home. Tehre are a lot of hobos and a nightclub on the corner so there's always creepers around and secuirity is no where to be seen except the week of 9/11 when 2 secuirity guards were stabbed (one stabbed to death) at the nightclub and we had bomb threats at PK1 and our underneath garage for the plaza.
There aren't too many people accepted into dlr... there is only one complex with 58 rooms (since one rm 300 is the housing office and one's the "gym") that have bugs. fair warning on those.
If you do head to the DCP find housing OUTSIDE of the program housing. I would have still been there if I didn't do their housing. Miguel is a HUGLY rude manager and doesn't really care for helping anyone. He's very into finding excuses as to why he can't or won't do things and everything is YOUR fault.
The CP was okay, but it was more hassle and more expensive than I could even afford. There were weeks I couldn't afford my rent to them because I had only gotten 8 hrs that week, which obviously didn't cover rent.
Not to mention everything I hear about the WDW cp is 100xs better than the DLR one.
I hate to sound like such a downer, but I'd love to share my horrid experience with you guys so you're sorta aware of whats gonna go on. I have a blog (
http://thoughtsofanunderagethinker.tumblr.com/) that throughout the wedding and tons of pictures I have blogs of postings I did while I was there to explain everything. you can check it out if you like