Advice? Screening app w/ collection items "disputed by consumer"

[Ruth Kelly]

Hi there, I have some experience leasing for a little over a year, and I haven't run into this particular combination of issues until now. 

Context: As is baseline standard for screening, I require all applicants to pass a full credit and background check I pay for through a professional organization membership. In the last few months I started paying for an affordable "pre-screen" report for those who get me my required ID and income info, a report that is less than $10, to get a sense of credit score and any disqualifying collections before running the full price credit and background check, for which I require the applicants pay my (state maximum) $52 application fee. I am in a low-income area, so my criteria is probably wider than most here would accept given the location and population (I am still apparently "picky" by local standards and "require too much"), but I still usually require a minimum score, no evictions, and no collections from landlords/property managers or utilities when I pull their reports. 

Now: I just did my pre-screening for an applicant which shows, under the "Collection Items" area of the report, both an item from an electric/gas company and an item from a cable company. However, both these items are noted in the report itself as "Comment: Account information disputed by consumer." Even with these collections items, the applicant juuuuust barely squeaks over my minimum standard qualifying credit score (I have lower scores with conditional acceptance that require a double security deposit and co-signer or both, and she exceeds both of those). I have let cable and phone bills slide before and just let them impact the overall score for criteria, but I generally take a hard line on utilities that I consider to be "required for basic minimum standards of living" — electric and gas, water, trash, reasoning being that most of the people in this area would let a cable bill get behind to pay their rent, but someone who lets their life-based utilities go to collections probably CAN'T pay for MANY things, rent included. What is throwing me is the "Comment: Account information disputed by consumer," which I have seen before but not on any of my hard-line items for an otherwise qualified applicant. 

When asked, the applicant said that this collections item was from identity theft and that she had disputed it, which the record shows she had. However, the dispute was not resolved, and it's not inconceivable to me that she could dispute it when there was no real dispute, or that it would not be resolved in her favor. Then, without being asked, she apparently just paid off the item and sent me the receipt, along with the phone number from the collections agency (I searched it and it was actually their number, not from someone who could be a friend posing as an agent) to confirm, saying even though it wasn't hers, she didn't want it to mess up her chance of renting here. This functionally means she accepted responsibility for the account, but it also means she paid it off.

Has anyone else handled a similar situation? What are your policies for evaluating collections items that are noted as disputed on credit reports?