A little over 20 years ago, Cesar Zepeda was a newly minted graduate of California’s Contra Costa College and looking for a place to live somewhere around Richmond, the East Bay community he’d called home since emigrating from Mexico as a child. In what seems—today at least—like an unusual move for a 22-year-old, Zepeda decided he wanted to buy rather than rent a home and set out looking for one, the epitome of the American dream. “It’s pretty funny,” says Zepeda. “I didn’t know what I was doing.” What ensued—the difficult search; the travails of setting up house; the experience of living in a newly developed corner of one of America’s most housing-challenged metropolitan areas—would eventually lead Zepeda into political life as a Richmond city council member.
When he was sworn in this January, Zepeda became one more among apersuasively, often from personal experience, about the housing issues facing voters. Last month, when Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida declared on social media—shortly before his official installment as America’s first Gen Z congress-person—that he’d been rejected for an apartment application in Washington, D.C., his post instantly went viral. It echoed years of stories about the cost of living for newly elected politicians struggling to find second homes in the expensive city, but also resonated with a vast audience of similarly frustrated Americans hungry for change.
