Private landlords will soon no longer be allowed to offer a short lease of one or two years for student rooms. The House of Representatives will today adopt an amendment proposal from D66 and SP. Temporary contracts will still be possible for exchange students who are in the Netherlands for a year, for example, and campus contracts will also remain intact. These are rental contracts that cover the duration of the study, usually five years, after which former students make way for new ones.
The amendment is an addition to the initiative bill of the PvdA and ChristenUnie to prohibit a temporary contract for independent living quarters. A fixed rental contract is becoming the norm again, with a few exceptions. A majority of the House will also vote in favor of this on Tuesday. The coalition parties are divided on this; the VVD does not want this, but D66, CDA and ChristenUnie do.
In the initiative, D66 and SP missed the problems that more and more students are experiencing with their rooms. Short leases are being offered more often and that causes a lot of stress and uncertainty, say SP Member of Parliament Sandra Beckerman and her D66 colleague Faissal Boulakjar. In their view, students need a stable base instead of constantly having to look for other accommodation. Because of this uncertainty, students also hardly dare to complain to their landlord about serious defects such as leaks or rotten window frames.
Since it became possible to offer temporary rental contracts in 2016, according to D66 and SP, (longer) campus contracts are hardly offered by landlords anymore. Housing associations do use campus contracts for student housing, precisely to keep the flow going and to prevent graduates from living too long in cheaper student units.
