I Can't Rent an Apartment Because of My Name

North Carolina, USA

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Throwaway to protect my identity. I'm a graduating college student, soon moving to a new state with my girlfriend. We're both going to be starting new jobs, her in June and me in August, that'll be paying well and allowing us to use our degrees. We're very excited.

The problem comes with our housing situation. We went up and toured several apartment complexes in March, and settled on one we really liked. We put in our application, and nearly instantly, we were rejected due to a failed background check. Now I've run into this once before, with a mix-up on my voter I.D. As it turns out, there is a man with the same full name and date of birth as me who lives one county away, and committed a felony in 2017.

I followed my rights according to the Fair Credit Act, and requested a copy of the background check from the company that conducts them. They gave me two reports, one given to the complex, one generated for me from everything they knew about me (which I assume means they would also run by Social Security Number). I showed this to the apartment office, and they were happy to hear it, but noted that I'd still need a clean report from the background check company to the apartment to be cleared.

I put in an official dispute to the company, noting that I am a separate individual with this information, and that Social Security Number can differentiate us, and after about two weeks of waiting, they told me they investigated my claim and stand by their initial ruling.

Following their next recommendation, I went to the county over, and asked for them to run a background check on me, thinking getting a clear one would help. I asked specifically for the county clerk to run it with special regards to Social Security Number, but they told me they couldn't use that to run it, and received a report with all the other man's information on it. I tried to submit that to the background check company, using features such as address and driver's license number to somehow try to show that this is another man, however they never even reopened the case with the new information. I've tried calling them to work with them and see how I can make this easier multiple times through the process, but they only have a service line through a call center, and I can't ever get a straight answer from them.

I contacted my school's student legal department, and he's helping me throw together an affidavit that I haven't lived at the addresses associated with the case, or have been arrested before, which hopefully will help in the future. Is there anything else I should be doing here?

Written By: NotTheSameMan
Source: http://bit.ly/2GnGyd9