That's a step few people will bother to take, just as is the case with most vacation rentals. A credit card is enough ID for even commercial operations.

Her only real mistake was to leave her "passport, cash, credit card...grandmother’s jewelry...camera, iPod, an old laptop, and my external backup drive...birth certificate and social security card" in the apartment. It seems they were locked in a closet, but removing them from the house altogether would have taken a lot of the sting out of this unfortunate experience.