Making Application for a New Rental House Without an SSAN

The economy has been bad for everyone. Like everyone else (excepting those who work for the government or for Goldman-Sachs) we are struggling to make ends meet. Technically, we are both "under employed" as neither of us has a job in our respective fields, and we have to make do with my two part time jobs. Even that has been getting worse, as one job has reduced the number of hours that we can work and the other reduced both the hours and the pay rate. We are doing everything we can to reduce costs. We even went on diets to cut the grocery budget.

We are at the end of our lease in this house, so it made sense to see if we could downsize our accommodations and get a reduction in rent. Even a reduction of two hundred per month can be the difference between eating and "having to diet." We spent the past week looking at all of the houses in this area with this and that criteria and a max rent that is two hundred less than we currently pay. There were very few options that would not overcrowd us into a place that was way-too-small. However, we found a really nice place that would meet our needs (actually, a couple of them, but the first choice was rented out from under us by a matter of hours), and decided to take the trek down to the property management office to make application.

It gets harder and harder to try to work within the "system" when you have no Mark of the Beast Foretold. The SSAN is everywhere. It's on every form. Generally, we write "Citizen - NONE *" in the space and annotate the "*" with "42 USC 405(c)(2)(B)(i) and Rev: 13: 16-17"

You would think that setting up utilities would be a major problem, but it is really easier than you would presume. Here is how we did it when we first moved to this town.

However, we know that when we fill out the rental application, there is really no way for anyone to do a credit check without The Mark, and so they will balk and it becomes contentious. We even go so far as to draft a cover letter to the application and provide quite a bit of documentation in preparation to having no electronic credit history. At the very least, the property management company can simply make six or seven phone calls to check our references and if they needed a fax back from the contact, they would be able to get it.

The last time we were rejected by a property management company, we sued under the federal Fair Housing Act (and the state's analog) and ended up amicably setting that case.

This time, we tried a new strategy: We would offer to pay the first six months of the lease in cash if they would cut the rent on the house by fifty bux per month (that's f$50, not s$50). When the owner accepted that offer, we handed over the application. Yes, there was a strange silence while the leasing agent read the annotation to the SSAN field. Yes, there was a discussion about not having SSANs because of our religious beliefs. But then, the leasing agent simply said, "Well, if you pay the entire year in advance, there should be no problem." And that was that.

We handed her the bulk of the year's rent in cash. This was unusual, because most property management companies will not accept cash, only certified funds or a money order. However, they took the cash and did not ask us to fill out an SAR.

Perhaps an SAR is unnecessary in this context, because it technically was not a banking transaction. So the owner was happy, the property management company was happy, and we were very happy.

Now all we have to do is to move all of the utilities.