Canal in Groningen: In the city, the housing shortage among students is particularly great
Photo: Carl Court / Getty Images
Not only in Germany, but also in the Netherlands, students have great difficulties at the beginning of the new semester in finding accommodation in the university towns. The city of Groningen had tents with long rows of beds erected as emergency shelters as early as September. Students could stay here for 12.50 euros per night. After protests, however, the city reduced the price to six euros per night, as various Dutch media unanimously report.
The organization “Shelter Our Students” has put a platform online through which homeless students can find a vacant couch or a guest room with residents of Groningen at short notice.
The organizers write that more than 600 young people, many of them from abroad, registered in a very short time.
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Hostels and hotels across the city have been overcrowded for weeks.
"Shelter Our Students" sees the university above all as having a responsibility.
"The university keeps sending out promises of places to study - but when the students arrive, they have to sleep on the street." In Amsterdam, around 15,000 young people protested in mid-September against the "Housing Crisis" among students.
The University of Twente in Enschede warns on its website against fraudsters who could capitalize on the plight of international students.
"We have received reports from students who have fallen for a fraud," it says in English.
The university warns against paying "inappropriately high sums" without seeing the accommodation or signing a contract.
"No Internationals"
The search is particularly difficult for students from abroad. On Facebook, where rooms and apartments are offered in property groups, applicants repeatedly read restrictions such as “No Internationals” or “Dutch-speaking only”. As the tabloid "AD" reports, the University of Twente is said to have appealed to foreign students to spread out further in the region - or to study somewhere else right away.
The problem is not entirely new, for a number of years there has been a shortage of living space at the beginning of the winter semester in the study cities of the Netherlands. According to the “National Student Housing Monitor” from Kences, the umbrella organization for student housing providers, around 20,000 students had difficulties finding accommodation at their place of study last autumn. According to analysts' estimates, this number will more than double in the next three years.
The Netherlands is currently experiencing an unprecedented student boom.
The Ministry of Education predicts that around 48,000 more young people will begin studying there in the next eight years than previously assumed.
At the same time, apartments and dormitories are being built - but not enough.
Accommodation is only planned for around 18,000 additional students by 2025.
Undressing is too expensive
This autumn, the weakening of the corona pandemic is exacerbating the already tense situation on the housing market.
Because at the moment, not only new students are looking for a place to stay.
Even those who were only able to attend online lectures last year due to the corona crisis and had continued to live with their parents during this time are now pouring into the campus.
According to the National Student Housing Monitor, students in the Netherlands currently spend around 46 percent of their disposable income on housing - three percentage points more than two years ago.
Of the students who still live with their parents, 43 percent said they did not want to move out in the near future.
It's just too expensive.
