Housing shortage

Are you looking for a room? That can sometimes be a stressful and difficult affair. And when you finally have an invitation to a house, you first have to compete with others to get the room, the so-called hospiteeravond. EM gives you advice to optimise your search and to survive the cruel hospiteeravond.

The housing shortage for students is continuing, so there is a new action plan. There are no hard targets, but agreements about better cooperation and information.

How do rental scammers convince students to transfer money? ESE researcher Sophie van der Zee researched  rental scams in England and explains the most important tactics.

Saskia, a Rotterdam local, is fighting scamming ‘landlords’, and ended up offering a room in her own home to a housing scam victim. ‘I knew there were scammers out there, but the extent of the scam is unbelievable.’

Searching for a room for months. Trying to avoid scammers. Never or hardly ever being invited for hospiteeravonden. Having to study in a dormitory with seven others. Dozens of students in Rotterdam hostels all face the same problems because of one common obstacle: not being able to find a room.

What is it like to fall prey to a swindler who is supposed to be giving you a room? “If I don’t find a new place by the end of the week, I will probably have to return to London.”

The National Student Union (LSVb) has issued a warning stating that on average, students in the Netherlands are overcharged more than €100 per month for their rent. In Rotterdam, the average student pays almost €110 more than his or her room is worth.

In Facebook groups for students seeking housing in Rotterdam, dozens of accounts have been set up to cheat new students out of their money. How do these swindlers operate? This summer, EM editors Feba and Tim went undercover in the world of student housing fraud.

Many scammers are active in the housing market for students in Rotterdam. Dozens of advertisers try to scam international students this way, according to research by EM. The Dutch Student Union and ESN Rotterdam are worried.

Because of the huge housing problem in Rotterdam, many students are forced to stay in hostels. Exchange students choose to stay in different hostels and airbnb’s until they’ll head home. They don’t have their own space and sleep in dormitories, sharing their room with up to fifty other people. There’s hardly any privacy. “Last night a man entered our room through an unprotected window and walked around the dorm trying to steal our stuff.”

An overheated housing market also attracts rack-renters and scammers. In recent weeks, we spoke to different students with annoying experiences. An exchange student told us that his far too expensive room ‘had to be painted’, in fact the room was rented to another. The substitute room his landlord offered him was way smaller, but the same price: 725 euro a month. An Italian told us a similar story. He got a smaller room other than the one he had actually rented, and even received a huge rent increase: from 600 to 675 euros a month. The Vietnamese student Huyen even paid for a house that did not appear to exist at all. This is her story:

Over the next few weeks, you’ll find around a hundred EUC students living on board a boat moored along Boompjeskade rather than in a flat in the city centre. The rooms are small – very small – but cosy.

The rooms for international students on campus were already fully booked at the beginning of summer. Even the new building of the Belgian student housing organization Xior on the corner of the campus Woudestein was full. Earlier this month, the first students moved in while the work was still in progress.

Especially for internationals, being unable to find a place to live is problematic. They cannot stay with their parents for a while longer or rely on friends or family. Marieke Oomen, the newly elected Chair of the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), sees many desperate foreign students. She is concerned about them: “International students are paying too much for rooms Dutch students would never accept.”

Still looking for a place to live? This can be a stressful and complicated business! And when you’ve got an invitation to a house visiting, you’ll often have to compete with other candidates during a ‘hospiteeravond’. But EM is offering a few tips that can help you optimise your search ánd to survive a ‘hospiteeravond’.