“‘I’m probably just going to have to, like, couch surf for a little bit.’”
That was Maxwell Frost, set to soon become the first member of Generation Z to serve in Congress, discussing his inability to get an apartment in Washington, D.C. despite being elected to Congress.
Frost, 25, says he has been denied from several apartments over his bad credit, which he accumulated while running his House race in Florida’s 10th Congressional District.
“It’s not cheap,” Frost admitted to ABC in an interview this week. “I’m dealing with it right now, getting denied from apartments, trying to figure out where to live because I have bad credit. I’m probably just going to have to, like, couch surf for a little bit.”
According to the U.S. House of Representatives Press Gallery, House members’ current annual salary is $174,000.
While that yearly income should be enough for most people to find suitable living accommodations, Frost, a democrat, responded to a tweet from the Republican National Committee Research Twitter account that, in addition to having bad credit, he has not gotten paid yet.
Frost’s campaign manager reportedly told Axios that Frost had informed a leasing agent for the apartment building in which he sought to live that he had been elected to serve in the incoming Congress, but he was denied anyway — Frost has previously stated that he drove for Uber
UBER,
during his campaign to help pay his bills.
Frost ran on a “social, racial & economic justice” platform and received high-profile endorsements from progressives and former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
See also: Almost 80% of Americans think the U.S. will experience great economic difficulty in 2023
According to a LendingTree survey from 2022, roughly 42% of Americans say they have been denied a financial tool like a credit card or loan in the past year due to bad credit. Average credit scores in the U.S. have either increased or stayed the same every year since 2017, according to Experian.
Ways to improve your credit score may include reducing your overall debt obligations and making on-time credit-card payments.
Frost is one of the many House-elect members closely watching the GOP House speaker vote on Wednesday. New members of the House cannot be sworn in until a speaker is chosen.