John, I’m not ashamed to speak openly about my struggle to find housing in DC and being denied apartments over my credit score.

But Republican leaders at the RNC and Breitbart thought this was the perfect opportunity to attack me for facing the same struggles that countless working-class folks go through everyday:

It’s interesting that the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” people take issue with me staying with friends while I save up enough money to get an apartment.

This is how out of touch they are. They don’t even know how renting an apartment works. Let me break this down…

When you move into an apartment, you pay first month’s rent, a security deposit, sometimes even last month’s rent, and furniture on top of all of that.

I don’t get my first paycheck until February and I have bad credit because I ran up a lot of debt running for my seat for a year and a half, so I don’t have a lot of money right now, even as a current member of Congress.

It’s no wonder why you hardly see working-class people running for Congress. How can we pass policies to help working families when politicians are so disconnected from the average American?

Republican leaders obviously have other “priorities” in mind. But instead of focusing on my situation, we should be focusing on the bigger picture: our broken housing system that subjects working-class people to skyrocketing rent, gentrification, and de facto segregation.

Thank you,

Rep. Maxwell Frost