{"id":129973,"date":"2021-09-02T14:36:29","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T12:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=129973"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:49","slug":"students-about-their-landlords-as-much-money-as-possible-for-as-little-effort-as-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2021\/09\/02\/students-about-their-landlords-as-much-money-as-possible-for-as-little-effort-as-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"Students about their landlords: ‘As much money as possible for as little effort as possible’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some landlords prefer to spend as little money as is possible on a house. Students Julia and Pleun both live in one of these houses and have a landlord who refuses to deal with any problems. “Sometimes filthy black gunk comes up out of the shower drain,” Julia says.<\/span><\/p>\n

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There's a hole in the floor in Pleun's kitchen<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFerayed Hok<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

German student Julia (24) lives with four other housemates in Rotterdam-South, near the Feijenoord football stadium. \u201cThis house is actually not meant for five people. Of the five of us, only three are officially allowed to register at this address with the municipality.\u201d Which is why Julia and one of her housemates are still registered at their former residential addresses.<\/p>\n

Just like the address, the stairway to Julia\u2019s apartment is shared with another household. Two doors and three flights of stairs up and you are standing in the living room. The apartment has two floors, with the kitchen, living room, shower, toilet and two bedrooms on the lower floor. Up the next flight of stairs, there are three more bedrooms, a large bathroom and an extra toilet, which is somewhat awkwardly installed in the passageway. Two extra rooms have been added to the house by building in extra wooden walls. \u201cThat\u2019s how the landlord earns another couple of 450 euros on the side,\u201d Julia comments snidely. On the top floor, a large room has been split into two small rooms and on the lower floor, the view from the living room to the street has been blocked off to make room for an extra bedroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Black gunk out of the shower drain<\/h2>

An additional bathtub and toilet were also built next to the kitchen. This renovation seems to have been tackled rather ineptly, as is evident from the recurring blockages. \u201cWhen someone does the washing up in the kitchen or uses the shower, the pipes get blocked and the water doesn\u2019t flow away. Sometimes dirty, black gunk comes up from the shower drain. That\u2019s really not nice. It doesn\u2019t go back down by itself either, so you have to get it out with your hands. It doesn\u2019t look like food that might have been washed down the sink either, we don\u2019t know what it is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When the problem cropped up again for the third time last year, Julia phoned the landlord, who then sent a plumber to the house. He cleaned the pipes and told them that the kitchen drainpipe was connected to the bathroom drainpipe, so the water was unable to drain off properly. If this was not sorted out, the problem would keep on recurring. \u201cBut the landlord disagreed. He felt that we, as the tenants, had done something wrong and so he sent us the bill. When we did not want to pay that, he informed us that the costs would then be deducted from our deposit.\u201d Since then, the same problem has happened four times in three years, and it was dealt with in the same way by the landlord each time.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t

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Lees meer<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t