Incoming congressman Maxwell Frost, 25, denied apartment in D.C.
Frost reportedly will only be able to afford an apartment deposit once he receives his first paycheck from the House of Representatives.Â
Maxwell Frost, the congressman-elect from Florida’s 10th Congressional District, was recently denied a Washington, D.C., apartment, reportedly because of poor credit due in part to debt accumulated during his campaign. His experience — minus the run for public office — underscored the plight of many of his fellow Generation Z members, in Florida and beyond.
Frost, 25, the first Gen Zer elected to the House of Representatives, shared the news Thursday on Twitter, noting that he is out of an apartment and an application fee.
“Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee,” Frost tweeted. “This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”
Frost replied, “Yes, it is!” to a Twitter user who inquired whether it was “normal” in the United States to pay a fee merely to apply for an apartment.Â
He continued by saying that running for office is “very inaccessible.”
“Last year, I was houseless for a month in Orlando because I was priced out of my home & couldn’t find affordable rent,” Frost shared. “I spent hundreds on application fees to just get denied because I didn’t have a full time job as a candidate.”
According to HuffPost, Frost — who identifies as Afro-Cuban of Haitian, Puerto Rican and Lebanese origin — is “still broke.” He claimed he would be able to pay the deposit on a Washington apartment only after he received his first paycheck as a House member.Â
He has been “just kind of sleeping with friends” and couch-surfing in the interim.
“Let this sink in—The youngest incoming member of US Congress… is denied approval on an apartment application in DC. And loses his application fee,” epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding said on Twitter in response to Frost’s situation. “Housing and rent is so rough. “
Frost quit his $93,000-a-year job with March for Our Lives, the student-led organization that works to end gun violence, so he could focus on competing in a Democratic primary against nine other candidates, HuffPost reported.
He drove for Uber to make ends meet at home, even as his campaign raised close to $3 million and benefited from $1 million in political action committee funding from Sam Bankman-Fried, creator of a since collapsed cryptocurrency company.
While the average member of Congress is a baby boomer, roughly 60 years old, Generation Z comprises individuals in their teens and early 20s, people born between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2010s.
Frost, like many liberal Gen Zers, is characterized as progressive and socially aware. He is a member of the most youthful and diverse class of freshmen in recent congressional history and aspires to hire an “eclectic mix” of staffers, some of whom will be like him and lack college degrees.
Although he is the most in-demand member of the new Congress, he rejects the notion that he is the only one who speaks for this generation.
“I really don’t see myself as the representation of Gen Z in this country,” he told HuffPost. “That’s the problem with celebrity culture in our politics: We put politicians on a pedestal. I’m honored to be the first [Gen Z] member in Congress. … But as far as representing this generation, I mean, everyone in the generation is a representative.”
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