Government wants more short-term rental contracts for students

Student rooms are often expensive or only available on a temporary basis. Politicians are considering different ideas to tackle excesses in this market, but their interventions can sometimes have unintended consequences.

For example, an attempt to cap rents and provide better tenancy protection for students has led landlords to sell their properties en masse, causing many student rooms to simply disappear from the market, aggravating the shortage. The wave of sales was also driven by tax measures that increased the burden on homeownership.

The new cabinet now aims to amend the rules for students. If everything goes the government's way, students should be able to obtain a temporary tenancy agreement from their landlords, according to the Dutch Minister of Housing, Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan.

Disadvantaged in their own city
In a letter to the House of Representatives, the minister observes that individual homeowners (i.e., not student housing providers such as SSH) prefer to offer temporary contracts. Currently, students are only allowed to obtain temporary tenancy agreements if they come from outside the municipality – for example, if they are doing an internship in another city or taking a minor elsewhere. As a result, students are at a disadvantage when looking for accommodation in their own cities.

A previous argument in favour of temporary contracts was that private landlords would be more willing to let properties or rooms that had been vacant for a while, which is less feasible under the current rules.

More expensive in the city centre
In addition, the government wants to allow landlords to charge higher rents in city centres of municipalities such as Amsterdam and Utrecht. The government believes that location is not given sufficient weight in the current rules governing maximum rent. If the government has its way, rents in the city centre could rise by around 96 euros per month, or by even more if the property is a listed building.

Furthermore, the cabinet does not think that a property without an outdoor space (such as a small garden) should be cheaper than one with an outdoor space. They argue that in city centres it isn't always possible to provide such a space.

The House of Representatives wants to regulate such matters by law, but the minister prefers to use an "administrative order" to speed things up. It remains to be seen what the House will think of this.

The National Tenants' Association reacts
The National Tenants' Association (Woonbond) does not care for the government’s new plans. “Policy must be based on facts, not on assumptions or lobbying pressure,” states its director, Zeno Winkels, in a press release. The Affordable Rent Act has been in force for less than two years, so the union would rather wait for an evaluation than intervene at this stage.

The association emphasises the increased taxes landlords must pay on their property holdings, which sometimes make it unprofitable to let them. The union believes the new measures simply pass the cost on to tenants.

Last autumn, the National Student Union (LSVb) protested against the housing crisis alongside several other movements. The union does not consider temporary contracts to be a solution “because students could find themselves back on the streets after just one or two years”.