‘The cleaning roster has decayed along with the ambiance in the house’

The Red Flat in the Tuindorp-West Complex is being renovated, which means all three hundred residents have to move out before October 15, 2024. DUB follows the ten residents of House 108 until the moment they leave. Do you want to read the previous stories? You can find them here.

“When I went on holiday in July, the atmosphere was still great here. But in the month that I was gone, six people moved out. I returned to an empty house. That sucked.” Jelle, who graduated from his Bachelor in Liberal Arts & Sciences before the summer, has lived in House 108 in the Tuindorp-West Complex for almost five years. Of the ten people who were living here when the SSH announced, last October, that they’d have to leave before October 15 of this year, he’s been living there the longest.

The residents of House 108 had known for a few months that the summer would be a quiet one. A number of housemates had already found a different room or studio, and would be moving out. There were questions about whether or not they’d have temporary tenants take their places, because who’d be interested in living in an unfurnished room for a matter of weeks? 

Temporary housemates
When Jelle returned from his holidays, he found the house empty. He spent the majority of August home alone. Officially, there were still five people who lived in the house at the time. One of them was Judith, the first temporary tenant who moved in in June. “She’s very nice, but she’s almost never home,” Jelle says. “I don’t know what else she gets up to.”

In the second week of August, two new tenants joined House 108, and Jelle had some hope that they’d contribute to the ambiance, but no. “They first did the UIT week, and then did the hazing rituals for Unitas. They left at six in the morning and returned at 2 a.m.. I never saw them.” The women did at least furnish their rooms, Jelle says. 

Foppe still lives in the house. He’s been Jelle’s housemate for four years, and spent all of August on holiday. “It felt like a haunted house, truly,” says Jelle. “Half of the rooms were empty. I avoided the kitchen, because it was filled with rubbish and food waste. The people who had left, hadn’t cleaned. The cleaning roster has decayed along with the ambiance in the house. And then we had a mice infestation to boot. That’s why, last week, the four of us did a deep cleaning. On the plus side: I haven’t seen the kitchen this clean in years.””

The neighbor's dirty kitchen. Photo: Samuel de Weerd

The clean kitchen from  Huize 108. Photo: Samuel de Weerd

Jelle had to wait for housing for a long time
Jelle is happy to see Foppe again, but he won’t be his housemate for long. Foppe will soon move to the Mammoth, another SSH complex, where three other former housemates have moved to as well. That means Jelle will be the only one left of the ‘old guard’. Thankfully, the SSH told him last week that they’ve found him a studio in the city centre; 25 square metres for a fair price. He can move in in October. But why did it take longer than it did for the others? 

“I kind of fell between the cracks,” Jelle says. “I just graduated from my Bachelor, and am now taking a gap year. That means I don’t qualify for houses that have campus contracts. The SSH told me, before the voting round, that I could move to a house that had a young adults’ contract, one that you can live in until you’re 27. You’re allowed to stay there for five years. Only much later did I find out that many of those homes apply a minimum income rule, that I don’t meet. So there were fewer homes available.”

The best batch
Jelle experienced the peak of his student years in House 108. He’s well aware that this will probably be the last time that he’ll be living with housemates. 

When asked what he thought was the best batch of resident, Jelle thinks for a bit. In the end, he responds with an answer that many students who’ve lived in student housing in the past years will agree with: “I’ve basically always had a great time here, but Covid was a special time. Nothing can really beat that. All of a sudden, the ten of us were forced to stay home, and we had to make the best of it. That forged such a special bond.”

But the past academic year of 2023-2024 was among his favourites, too. “Very different than Covid, also because I’m now the oldest rather than the youngest. Having those new people here gave such a new boost to the house. They were very entrepreneurial, came up with fun ideas, and wanted to do all sorts of things together.”

The former residents of House 108 have so far kept their promise of having dinner together once a week after moving out. This has already happened twice since the holiday season: in the House 108 kitchen, among the mice poop. 

Mice poop Photo: Samuel de Weerd

No demolition parties 
Jelle says there won’t be a final party. “Last week, the SSH emailed us to say that any damage to shared facilities when we leave will be at our own expense. The SSH did thankfully fix the downstairs bathroom door, which Floris had wrecked during our last house party. We didn’t have to pay for that.”

The last remaining residents also have to ensure that the house is empty and swept clean. “All the refrigerators have to be gone, and so do the tables, chairs, couches, empty crates, vacuum cleaners, pots and pans and everything else,” Jelle says. “We also have to remove the flooring from the empty rooms.” The SSH will be providing large dumpsters that they can use to discard their things. 

There will be no new housemates for Jelle. The SSH also emailed that it’s difficult to find students who want a room for such a short period of time, and therefore, no more rooms will be offered for rent in the Red Flat. Most of the final work, then, will be Jelle’s responsibility. He’s lucky to have his former housemates, because everyone has promised to come and help. “That shows again what a great house we were,” he says, melancholy. 

24-year-old Jelle studied Liberal Arts & Sciences, with a focus on Social Geography. His studies were very broad, and in the future, he’d like to specialise more. That’s why he’s taking a gap year, in which he’s planning to do internships and traineeships to orient himself. That way, he hopes to be able to make the right choice for a Master’s programme next year. 

After obtaining his Bachelor's degree, he went on a month-long holiday in July. First, he spent time in Croatia with a group of friends. From there, he took a boat by himself, to then spend time in Italy with another group of friends. 

He enjoys spending time on boats: he’s a skipper for the boat company Lekkerbootjevaren, transporting people through Utrecht’s canals by boat. Those boat tours include food for the guests, and there’s often plenty left over for him. That was rather convenient these past weeks, because he worked up to six days a week, and now he didn’t have to cook. That way he could avoid the mice infestation in the kitchen of House 108. 

Aside from captaining boats, he also has other fun hobbies: he collects vinyl, plays football, and enjoys DIYing.