This is the kind of paragraph you get into journalism to write:
Mr. McMillan declined to show the apartment, saying he feared for his neighbors' safety, and fielded questions from the driver's seat of his parked graphite-colored Honda CR-V, which is also his mobile office. When he travels, he sleeps in it, too; in the back were a sleeping bag, a bottle of Scope Original Mint mouthwash and a pair of nunchucks he keeps in a seat-back pocket. That weapon happens to be banned by the state he wants to run. “My main object is to protect myself,” he said. “I will worry about the consequences later on.”
That's Jimmy McMillan, the nominee for governor of New York from The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, who stole the show at the gubernatorial debate two days ago. He is living in his current residence "rent free." He says he's lived there for 10 years. Then again:
“Don't look for anything I say about my living space to be true,” he said.
None of this changes the fact that according to a recent study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, you have to earn about $50,000 a year just to pay rent on a two-bedroom apartment in New York. For a lot of people, the rent really is too damn high. Although given that McMillan's unemployed son lives in a rent-controlled apartment, he might not be the best spokesperson.
