I don't know why it took so long for it to click in my head (probably because I spend as little time thinking about him as I can), but it finally did.
Large outstanding, delinquent student loan debt = trashed credit.
Trashed credit = can't buy a house = has to continue to rent.
That's why he wants it erased. His whole life is one bad decision after another and then making more bad ones as a cope and more bad ones from seething.
He owns a house in West Memphis along with his brother, but it was in inherited from his dad, not something he bought.