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The newly-elected Gen Z Congressman was denied an apartment lease.

In the recent midterm elections, Maxwell Frost was elected as a new Congressman of Florida, the very first member of Generation Z to hold the office. To aid in his new responsibilities, he made the decision to move to Washington DC, and was set to rent a new apartment this week. Frost informed the apartment representative that, due to his young age and campaigning, his credit wasn’t great, but they promised this wouldn’t matter. Turns out it mattered a lot.

The first Gen Z member of Congress was denied a D.C. apartment because of bad credit. Maxwell Frost, who was elected to the U.S. House in November, says Congress has a serious problem of accessibility for people who don't come from wealth. https://t.co/vyge7XVUmH

— NPR (@NPR) December 9, 2022

“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. This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money,” Frost tweeted Thursday.

In a statement to NPR, Frost clarified that while he posted his message out of frustration, it was also a deliberate decision to highlight the fact that housing in DC is prohibitively expensive, even for lawmakers and especially those who don’t come from wealthy families.

“[Frost] just stating this publicly is kind of saying the quiet part out loud and shining a light on a reality that it’s incredibly expensive to live in DC, to be young in DC, and then maintain it even for members of Congress,” Casey Burgat, the legislative affairs program director at George Washington University, told NPR.

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

“It makes Congress exactly what it’s been for so long: A disproportionately wealthy, disproportionately white institution,” Burgat added. “This is a main contributor for why people can’t afford to run for office. It’s not seen as a viable path. And though we’re getting a little bit better at our diversity, we still have a long way to go and the cost of it is not getting cheaper.”