Wow, it’s actually summer, thought Zahara Forno, a second-year Political Science student, on a late-July morning as she pulled up the blinds to reveal a sunbathed park packed with people enjoying Stockholm’s first clear skies in three weeks. She watched them splash around in a local pond and play golf while her mind buzzed with ideas for taking advantage of the lovely weather.
But her desires were swiftly crushed. She remembered her burning responsibility and sombrely retreated to her bed. She opened her laptop. There, she began the ritual that had defined her every morning for the past month: browsing websites listing rental apartments in Amsterdam, where she was due to return after the summer.
Most students eventually find housing in Amsterdam but hunting down an apartment without anxiety, frustration, and helplessness accompanying your every step is a luxury very few get to enjoy. As the student housing shortage continues, fuelled by landlords selling off their properties and a lack of new construction, university-goers line up for every scrap of available space. The result is a market defined by tooth-and-nail competition, endless disappointment, and – for some – the very real fear of having to drop out if they don’t find a place to live. And it’s not only first-years or internationals who suffer – the shortage affects everyone.
Insane competition
“I think I grew a grey hair”, says Adéla Kučerová, a first-year Psychology student from the Czech Republic, remembering her housing search this summer. In May, a death in the family left her with no choice but to adopt Rowan, a cat. Since many landlords don’t allow pets, Kučerová’s hunt for accommodation quickly became extra tricky. She realised she could not rely on the housing offered by VU to first-year students, since none of its options allowed pets. Instead, Kučerová searched for accommodation on websites such as Funda, RentHunter, or Pararius. On these portals, landlords post listings and choose who to invite for a viewing.
‘I think I grew a grey hair’
Given the huge demand, each listing is flooded with applications – often hundreds of them. To view the apartment, landlords commonly invite only the ten to fifteen people who first responded to their listing. With the number of applicants this high, making that shortlist often comes down to seconds. “It feels like you’re running a race”, says Kučerová. “You see a room, it has an outrageous price, and there’s already twenty people in front of you.”
Many websites offer to notify you the moment a new listing is created. Kučerová remembers dropping everything immediately when receiving such notifications, hoping to be among the first ones to apply. But even with notifications on, she was often too late to respond. “The competition is insane”, she says. The madness of the housing market made Kučerová second-guess her choice to come here. “If I were to be graduating this year and applying for university, I would not be going to the Netherlands”, she says.
Morning scroll
Political Science student Forno experienced similar exhaustion during her housing search. In her first year, she lived in an apartment offered to her through VU. Last June, she had to move out as all first-year university housing is offered for one year only. When she started looking for a place back in March, she began gradually lowering her expectations. Soon, she decided to “just accept whatever”. Forno received very few replies between March and June – she considered herself lucky when she got one message a week. None of these exchanges led to a place to rent.
As the summer started and the prospect of not having a place to live became more real, Forno adopted a strict routine of daily scrolling through housing-listing websites like Kamernet, Huurwoningen, or Stekkies. Using some of these websites also came with a considerable financial cost. Forno would pay for their subscription services, which offer perks like unlimited messages and access to staff-reviewed listings. “For your message to even be looked at, you have to pay”, she says, adding that she spent around four hundred euros on such subscriptions.
Every morning, she would check the portals “immediately” after waking up. “I would just grab my phone and wouldn’t even look at my messages”, she says. “I would just go on Kamernet. In the morning, I usually just want to chill and have a good breakfast, have a nice discussion with my mom”, she says. Instead she would choose to “scroll for another two hours”. The situation started to take a toll on her mental wellbeing. “You wake up and you’re in an immediate bad mood because you can’t find anything.” Despite the extra effort, she found the results deeply disappointing. “I got zero replies. Like nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all”, she says. “I was a ghost.”
Judgy evenings
On the Dutch housing market, international students are often disadvantaged by not speaking the language and having little expertise and few connections. While this makes their search particularly stressful, finding housing as a Dutch student can be challenging in its own right.
“It’s pretty exhausting”, says Hanna de Boer, a third-year Human Movement Sciences student, who spent last semester attending hospiteeravonden at Uilenstede. During these events, a group of flatmates invites around ten candidates over on the same evening and picks one to move in. “You just know you’re going to be judged by your character”, says De Boer, who attended six such evenings throughout the four months before being accepted. “It’s a bit weird.”
De Boer says that in the end she didn’t mind being scrutinised by the residents, but admits it was “disappointing” when hosts she felt a connection with did not choose her as a tenant. Whenever this happened, she would return home and lie awake, considering what she could have done differently.
In denial
Every year, a portion of students coming to study in Amsterdam do not find housing and choose to stay home. For Kučerová and Forno, this was not an option. “I think I was in denial”, says Forno, adding that she didn’t even consider dropping out. Late into her housing search, she began texting friends and asking if she could temporarily stay with them in Amsterdam, hoping she would have a better chance of finding something once she was actually there.
In August, Forno received a housing offer from VU, which she had reached out to a couple of weeks earlier. “I think I was really lucky”, she says, explaining that the waiting list for university housing for second-years seemed “infinite”. Again, the contract runs for one year only, and she is readying herself for another search. But she also refuses to think too much about it for now. “I’ve been so stressed about housing for so long that right now I just want to sit and enjoy where I am”, she says.
No going back
“It was very scary to imagine that I would drop out”, says Kučerová, for whom such a possibility became real when she still had no housing at the beginning of August. “Mom was very proud of the fact that I got into an international university. And I’ve told all of my classmates: ‘I’m going to an international university’. Everybody in the family knew it”, she says. With all the celebration back home, she felt like coming back would make her look “like the biggest idiot”.
‘She’s having a good time in the attic’
Determined, she began her studies even though it was clear she would not find housing before the semester began. She is now staying in an attic of her friend’s family’s house in Zuidermeer, from where she commutes for an hour and fifteen minutes to VU. Luckily, her cat Rowan was allowed to come with. “She’s having a good time in the attic”, Kučerová says, laughing.
Her friend’s family expects her to find something within three months, and despite their promises to let her stay for longer in case she doesn’t find anything, she is set on finding something as soon as possible so as not to be a burden. “Nearly every day I think about the fact that I need to find a place to live”, she says. “I hate it.”