AMSTERDAM PRESENTS: HOUSING HORROR STORIES (PART 1)
MARCH 28TH, 2022
Illustration by: Karolin Eks.
“We have a little mouse in the house that we named Trevor, and we don’t do anything about it cause it’s just one mouse and having just one mouse in your house is ironically quite lucky in Amsterdam.” — Nisa Ceylan, student, on the peculiarities of living in Amsterdam.
ON SCAMMERS AND SKETCHY LANDLORDS
Even if the Dutch housing crisis isn’t the main crisis on people’s minds these days, it’s an issue that needs to be discussed and one I cannot afford to ignore when thinking about my future.
When I came to study in Amsterdam, back in 2018, I wasn’t aware of any housing shortage or housing crisis. I was also lucky enough to be enrolled in a programme that guaranteed housing for the entire duration of my undergraduate studies.
After I moved here, I began hearing stories about housing trouble in Amsterdam. It seemed to me that, to secure a room successfully, one either had to have big savings, rich parents, immense luck or an insane amount of grit to cycle 45 minutes to get to the centre of town every morning.
Obviously, there is the usual hesitancy of many Dutch landlords to rent to international students as they don’t consider them a good fit for the neighbourhood. Then there’s the multitude of Airbnb’s in the centre. Not to mention the importance of connections to be made aware of available houses or rooms in the first place.
On top of that, there are countless under-the-table deals, registration difficulties, scammers and irresponsible landlords — all of which make life impossibly hard for potential renters and desperate students.
The biggest issue of all is the simple fact that Amsterdam, not unlike other major Dutch cities, doesn’t have enough houses for its growing population.
THE HOUSING CRISIS
The Woonprotest, which took place last autumn, was a sign that a sizable portion of the Dutch population have become fed up with this systemic issue. The eruption of collective anger that took place on September 12th, 2021 in Westerpark was aimed at ‘huismilkers’ — parasitic investors and landlords such as the bespectacled Prince Bernard who allegedly owns over 600 houses in the Amsterdam area and the Dutch government which has a tendency of favouring business above providing its citizens with housing.
AUC’s (Amsterdam University College) independent student newspaper, The Herring, published an article about the difficulties UvA (University of Amsterdam) students have with housing in Amsterdam. It mentions students being left essentially homeless and having to live on their friend’s couches for long periods of time.
Asides from the practical problem of not having a roof over your head, not having an address in the Netherlands can also lead to a chain of bureaucratic difficulties. A residential address is needed when moving to the Netherlands in order to receive a BSN number (citizen service number), which in turn is needed for opening a bank account, receiving government benefits for studying or insurance, and signing an employment contract.
Below, you can delve into the experiences of two UvA students whose stories are examples of Amsterdam’s finest selection of housing horror stories.
EMMA: PTSD FROM A HORRIBLE LANDLADY
Emma*, an MA student in Literature at the UvA, lived with her friend’s mother between August 2020 and February 2022. In the beginning, she felt lucky to have gotten a room in Oud Zuid for 450 euro a month and got along with her friend’s mother. Soon enough, however, her relationship with the house’s main inhabitant became difficult.
The woman got mad at Emma and accused her of putting everyone in danger after she brought over her boyfriend who tested positive for coronavirus a few days later. “The woman frightened me when she got angry and this became a recurring theme throughout the nearly two years I lived there,” Emma admits.
At the same time, the landlady would host dinner parties and see acquaintances every day. “The guests were often very unsympathetic, or I was treated like a ghost,” Emma recounts. “The first thing her neighbour said to me was that I should be ashamed of myself for not speaking fluent Dutch after living in the Netherlands for four years. I was left speechless.”
After visiting her parents over Christmas, Emma was told that she would not be allowed to quarantine the necessary days in her own room upon her return. “The hypocrisy was unreal,” she recounts. “Her son returned from London days before I left and the first thing he did [when he got back] was to have dinner with his mother.”
Having nowhere else to go, Emma quarantined at a friend’s place in Utrecht, but she says, “I told them I stayed in a fancy hotel in Amsterdam. And in the end, she [the friend’s mother] caught Corona not from me, but from people around her.”
One might wonder why Emma stayed there for a year and a half. When asked, she says, “I had PTSD and maybe still have traces. I felt like that environment was so toxic but so familiar at the same time. I relied on the cheap rent, I was scared of going on Kamernet and losing a big sum of my saving privileges.”
In the end, Emma decided that the cheap rent was no longer worth the humiliation and discomfort. “I’m moving to Amstelveen in March,” she tells me when I talked to her in early February, “and will be living without a landlord for the first time in 2 years. I love the neighbourhood; I can afford the flat with my horeca** money and I can stay for as long as I want. The longer the better.”
At the end of our conversation, Emma told me, “After the rain, there is a rainbow.” Only that for others, Amsterdam is perpetually soaking wet.
MARCUS: 3 YEARS OF STRUGGLING (AND FAILING) TO FIND A HOME
“My story with Amsterdam housing starts before I even got to Amsterdam, like for many of us.”
Marcus*, a third-year student at the UvA tells me as we sit down in the sun on the edge of a canal near PC Hoofthuis. “I remember staying up at night waiting for the form [student housing application] to come online cause I really needed affordable housing. I did it very fast but regardless I ended up being waitlisted.” Marcus is put on a waiting list but told to come to Amsterdam anyway. By the beginning of the semester, he’s promised to be given a room.
“Back then I was really young and naïve, I guess. So, I listened to them.” Marcus recounts his story humorously, yet with a tint of cynicism. “I rented a room in Noord which was a bit far but it was my first time in Amsterdam so I didn’t really care where I was staying.”
The semester began, but Marcus heard nothing from the UvA who promised him a house by the beginning of September 2019. “I had been trying to contact the international office and they weren’t replying — like dead silent,” he tells me. “ So, I had to start couch surfing in the meantime. I was also struggling with my mental health at the time, which didn’t help.”
He lived with friends till the end of September, at which point, “I sent an angry email to the international office — it’s a pattern — and I received a response within a couple of hours telling me that they had lost my application.” He still laughs with disbelief, “they said they will find me a house within three days, and I was like hmm, I strongly doubt that but okay. And they did it — which also means that when they want to do something they have the means to do it.”
They offered Marcus a room in student housing in Diemen where he stayed for two years. He now sees his time there as relatively good, although he experienced the usual problems of bedbugs and difficulty communicating effectively with his landlords. When his contract in Diemen was about to expire, Marcus set out to look for housing with a friend.
The search for a house included the usual scammers and unfriendly landlords, but what Marcus noticed most was the number of advertisements saying: Housemates wanted: no students, no males and no internationals. Marcus summarises his disappointment cynically with, “get a pet.”
Eventually, a couple of days before the end of his contract, Marcus found out about an available room through an Italian friend of his. He begins the story, “I go and get presented with this room which has no windows.” He pauses knowing that I haven’t heard the best of it yet. “Instead it has two ventilation holes and a window in the ceiling. If it rains, I cannot keep it open, by contract apparently. I can honestly say that I pay 700 euros for that shit and it’s smaller than the room I had in Diemen. And it’s horrible.”
Marcus told me that the troubles he has with his current house have on multiple occasions driven him to seriously consider quitting his studies and moving away.
Marcus’ biggest issue are the incredibly thin walls. “I can assure you if my old neighbour coughs in his room, you can hear it in my bed. If someone has sex on my floor the whole building can hear it. And my room is adjacent to the toilets.” When e-mailing the landlord about it, Marcus gets dismissed. What are they gonna do, the landlord asks. Soundproof the bathrooms?
“Yes, go for it! Or build a good building. It’s not a historical building either, it’s something of concrete and apparently paper, I don’t know what they used to make the walls there,” Marcus says with frustration. “I am sure that if I punched the wall hard enough, I could reach my neighbour and say hello…”
Thankfully, Marcus is nearly done with his degree and he’s happy to be graduating this summer, but as he looks back at his time in Amsterdam, studying at the UvA, he gets visibly agitated. “A couple of days ago I saw a sticker somewhere on the UvA’s social media asking for advice from current students for applicants and new students,” he begins and looks at me seriously and says, “I’d say, bro don’t come.”
He believes UvA has a responsibility to be honest with incoming students about the difficulties they may face when moving to the Netherlands, “why do you want to keep fishing, it’s like catfishing for university students…”
As we talk in the sun and watch the jolly commotion of a beautiful morning in the centre, Marcus remarks, “I love this city; I think it’s one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen, when it’s sunny, but at times it’s really unbearable.”
These are just two of many stories that you can hear when the “apartment” topic comes up in discussions. The city is lovely and filled with opportunities but, if you’re interested in coming, be ready to fight. Amsterdam, when it comes to housing, is a tough opponent.
NOTES
*Names changed to protect the identity of the sources.
** Horeca – hotels, restaurants and cafés — essentially, a word used to refer to the service sector.
