The other day, I went into the Department of Licensing to get myself a Washington driver’s license. It was a surprisingly painless experience – I think I was in and out in under 20 minutes – which was notable in a way, but isn’t why I’m writing this little piece. Instead, what struck me was that of my three proofs of residency (needed for the real ID process), the one I figured was most legitimate wasn’t accepted: my lease.

Of course, a bank statement and a paycheck with my address on them are maybe obviously fair enough proofs of residence but I was taken aback that a lease didn’t count. The man behind the counter made passing reference to legislators feeling that the variety of leases state wide made them poor proofs of residence in general. Evidently, my own lease has a certain amateurishness to it (our landlord is just a guy after all), but if you think about this for one second, it is immediately apparent that this is a dumb argument.

My lease is a legally binding document about the place I live! If I fail to pay rent, and my landlord starts the eviction process, I would probably not be able to argue that my lease “doesn’t count” as a legal documentation binding me to pay rent at the physical address listed. Sure, I guess it’s technically possible that I could be renting a unit with no intention to reside in it, but that’s a bit much isn’t it?

What’s interesting to me here is that neither my bank nor employer do any kind of verification about my address. On the other hand, I had to pass a background check and credit check to have the privilege of signing this lease. But there’s more to consider: I have a bank account, and a job. If I lacked either of these, I would have struggled to find good documentation proving my residence¹. So if you’re a renter who doesn’t have a job, it is needlessly difficult to prove your residence to the State of Washington.

This is despite the fact that basically anything a homeowner would have handy that’s roughly analogous to a lease (deed, title, property tax documents, etc.) is accepted. So the legal paperwork required to be a homeowner is good enough, but the legal paperwork required to be a renter isn’t.

All of this is strong evidence of what we all know: the legal system is biased against renters. Indeed, in Washington landlords outnumber renters three to one², and homeowners outnumber renters ten to one. While people contain more nuance than just if they are a renter, owner, or landlord, the lack of direct representation for renters in positions of power tends to mean that common-sense policies like rent control are somewhere between nonexistent and ineffectual.

And it also leads to ridiculous situations where the legal documentation tying you to an address doesn’t count for the purposes of address verification. This may not seem like the biggest fish to fry, and of course it isn’t, but its emblematic of a legal and political apparatus that is uninterested in renters as a class. There are endless examples of this, but this example felt worthy of complaint exactly because its a trivial barrier enacted by a legislative body that is out of touch with what doing something like this means in practice. While the entire premise of the REAL ID program is, in my opinion, utterly stupid³, its made worse when administrative rules add additional burdens to the less legally privileged schmucks like me who rent.

I was fortunate enough to have a job when getting a REAL ID. If I didn’t, my only option would have been a combination bank statement, utility bill, or personal mail. While it’s easy enough to say that most people have those things, it’s another thing to functionally require them for full participation in society. In my apartment, the utilities are included with rent – which means the only utility in my name is internet. And look, I won’t go into a tirade saying that you shouldn’t get a bank account, but I think it’s worth mentioning that tons of people lack access to financial services like banking, and these people are overwhelmingly poor and Black or Hispanic⁴. Someone living in poverty may realistically be unable to get a REAL ID in Washington as a result of the state not accepting a lease as legitimate proof of address.

Its little injustices like this that make poverty overwhelming, and we have a responsibility to make our systems easier to navigate. If you live in Washington, I’d encourage you to write an email to your legislator highlighting the little easy fixes like this.

Thanks for reading. ‘Til next time!

Footnotes

1. Looking at the list (which you can only really find if you navigate through this tool), I think the only one I would have had handy is “postmarked personal mail”. But come on – that counts over a lease? ↩︎
2. Further reading ↩︎
3. I’m not convinced you should need an ID to fly at all, much less one that requires proving your residences at an address. All these things do are disenfranchise the less ↩︎
4. Further reading ↩︎