House of Representatives wants English translations on the tenancy committee website

Last month the House of Representatives consulted Minister for Internal Affairs, Kajsa Ollongren, about student housing and the fate of foreign students. In some cities, there is a considerable shortage of housing and foreign students are easy prey for rental scammers.

One of the problems is that foreign students don’t know the regulations and have no idea how high their rent may actually be. Why can’t we just translate the tenancy committee website into English, D66 member Jessica van Eijs asked her party colleague, Ollongren.

The minister responded with caution. You can’t translate everything into English, she said. That doesn’t happen in the judiciary either. Perhaps the students should use an interpreter.

Interpreter

PvdA Member of Parliament, Henk Nijboer, thought that was crazy. He himself found it difficult to find information on the tenancy committee website. Imagine how a Chinese student would struggle. “You’d then have to ask an interpreter to say: ‘my rent is eighty euros too high.’ That can’t be a serious proposal, can it? It wouldn’t be difficult to translate the website into English, right?”

Yesterday, despite the Minister’s objections, the parties D66, GroenLinks, PvdA, VVD and ChristenUnie submitted a motion to “make the essential parts of the tenancy committee’s website available in English”.

Ollongren didn’t provide any further objections, because these groups together formed a majority. She called the motion “helpful to ensure that foreign students can sufficiently understand the possibilities open to them.”