Maxwell Frost, the first Gen-Z member of Congress, says he was denied DC apartment due to bad credit
Frost’s campaign manager says it shows how dire the housing crisis is “when a member of Congress can’t get approved for an apartment”
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Your support makes all the difference.The youngest person ever elected to Congress says he was denied an apartment in Washington DC due to his bad credit history.
Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat from Florida, said in a Twitter thread this week that he was apartment hunting ahead of his swearing-in ceremony next month.
The Gen-Z congressman-elect shared that he notified the landlord of his poor credit history, which he said was due to quitting his job to campaign full time, and was told it wouldn’t be a problem.
“He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee,” Mr Frost wrote in a tweet.
Mr Frost, the first Gen Z member elected to Congress, tweeted that he ran up “a lot of debt” after quitting his job as an Uber driver while running to replace Val Demmings in Florida’s 10th district.
“For that primary, I quit my full time job cause I knew that to win at 25 yrs old, I’d need to be a full time candidate. 7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day. It’s not sustainable or right but it’s what we had to do,” he said.
For those asking, I have bad credit cause I ran up a lot of debt running for Congress for a year and a half. Didn’t make enough money from Uber itself to pay for my living.
— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) December 8, 2022
In 2018, just-elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times she too struggled to afford an apartment in Washington DC.
She quit her job as a waitress at a New York taqueria to run for Congress, and explained that during the period between election day and swearing-in, she was unable to draw an income.
As a candidate, you can’t give yourself a stipend or anything till the very end of your campaign. So most of the run, you have no $ coming in unless you work a second job.
— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) December 8, 2022
“I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real,” she told the Times.
Members of Congress earn a base salary of $174,000.
According to property site Zillow, the median rent for an apartment in Washington DC is $2,600 per month.
Mr Frost’s campaign manager Kevin Lata told The Independent it was an “indictment of how bad the housing crisis is in our country when a member of Congress can’t get approved for an apartment”.
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