I'm now "in the process" of looking for a new rental. Turns out this cute house I'm living in has asbestos insulation and electrical problems. The electrical outlets in the living room stopped working shortly after we moved in 7 months ago, and the electric fireplace quit next, the only source of heat in the house. So we used electric room heaters and an extension cord from the bedroom to the desk area. The owner kept assuring us her husband would make repairs when he got off the boat, he's a commercial fisherman.
I've been looking at craigslist ads & photos of rentals which is enough to cause real depression. Is there a landlord hall of shame online? well, there should be. It's enough to cause nightmares, looking at photo after photo of barren, cheaply remodeled, dark, old cast off everything, shabby, tacky, dirty, cramped, little rentals with ads that say "you may apply". All offered through property management corporations of course. After looking at the photos I feel like throwing up.
I went online recently to request my free yearly credit report and discovered that my previous Identity Theft dilemma has not gone away. I can't verify the information on my report via the identity confirmation questions asked: what is the amount of the mortgage I got in June of 2000? (I've never had a mortgage) What credit cards, people I lived with, counties I lived in, etc ... so I had to copy documents that prove who I am and send the request by mail. I have to do this every time I request a copy of my credit report. Then when I finally get the report in the mail, I always wonder why I bothered. It's just upsetting and there's nothing I can do about it.
So much for filing a complaint with the FTC for all the good that did. And so much for not looking like a career criminal on my credit report.
Sunday, Sept 16th; The rental outlook isn't getting much better. Choices. let's see. Small and run down. Large and run down. Small, sterile and no privacy. Coin-op laundry facilities, horrors.. buying rolls of quarters to do laundry makes me feel insane. There should be a law against coin-op laundry facilities in rental units. I mean really, it's not bad enough that you have to pay a ridiculous amount to park yourself in someone's investment building, but having to count out quarters to wash? How long will it be before someone thinks of the shower as a pay per use feature for 'renters.' ?
Anyway. The few places that look like actual (affordable) homes have screening processes that president Obama might not pass much less a person with 3 social security numbers and multiple alias's.. That's me. Yep. That's what my credit report says. There's at least one mortgage and a bankruptcy in 2010 too, icing on the cake. The bankruptcy is connected to an address in Chico where I apparently have utilities in my name as well. (The word I'm thinking of at this moment is "screwed") Well well, I better go get my positive-thinking hat back on, or maybe in this case that would be the hoping-for-a-miracle hat heh heh.
A bank employee once told me there's so much identity theft in the U.S. we won't be able to continue using our social security numbers for identification much longer. From what I've seen in my real estate research, I'd say the problem is unfixable. I'd say there isn't a county in California and very few elsewhere whose public records aren't massively corrupted with falsely filed or inaccurate information.
There's also an odd pattern I stumbled across in the (California) counties District Attorney's offices, in their filed child support judgements. Can't recall what it was exactly that struck me as odd, something about the names and dates filed. I'd have to review my notes to recall what the pattern was. Not that it would make any difference because people in the U.S. don't care about corruption unless it affects them personally in a way that's immediate and clear. ( but if the popular media tells them to care about it, then they're interested for a few minutes.) In any case it's not my job, that DA office weirdness. I get my life threatened often enough over the real estate stuff. My point is, false identities are a HUGE issue in our public records. Social security numbers and driver's licenses will soon be a thing of the past and hello Biometric security systems.
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