Opinion | The “free market” rewards exploiters in the student housing market

I recently moved into a student building rented out by one of the problematic companies that the NOS, the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation, reported on last week: Xior Student Housing, Plaza Resident Services, and Change=. For my housing security and privacy, I will not report which of the three companies I rent from, but the few weeks I have been living here now have not exactly given me much hope, to say the least.
 
Eviction
The group app with fellow residents is bursting with stories of unlawful service charges and charges of remarkably high energy costs. If you don’t pay them, you can expect a collection agency, legal action, and threats of eviction. This happens even when your case is still before the Rent Commission. Even after losing a case, these companies continue to send claims, according to experts in our group app and the person interviewed on the NOS site.
 
And most of these are foreign students. For them, this is extra tough, since they are in a foreign country without parents with a backup bedroom and also have much poorer access to the right information. This happens although they, like us, are often already under high study pressure. So for exploiters, this is the perfect opportunity to squeeze more money out of the students.
 
Energy consumption
Fortunately, my roommate and I haven’t had to deal with this yet, but one thing struck me right away: We don’t get any insight into our energy consumption. After hearing all these scary stories, I wanted to be able to quickly raise the alarm. I went to ask the employee who spends a few hours in her cubicle on the first floor twice a week. This friendly lady told me that the rental company has no visibility into this because the meter readings go directly from the apartment to the power company. “I find it very odd myself,” she said, adding that she’s only a “fill-in.” So despite her kindness, she shrugged off the responsibility and there wasn’t much more I could do, either.
 
Then we made another attempt via e-mail. We got an e-mail back saying that the landlord is not obliged to give insight into this unless the tenant invokes their right. Well, that’s pretty simple, we thought, then we invoke this right. We were able to make an appointment at an office in Utrecht that is only open on Wednesdays.

 
Conclusion: As a resident, you don’t need an article from the NOS to find out within a few days that these companies are guilty of bad behavior. It’s just a matter of time before you, too, experience it.
 
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the NOS concludes in its research that the rental companies have lost 3,812 of the 5,595 cases analyzed by the Rent Commission over the past five years. In a response, two of the three companies mentioned claiming more or less that in most of these cases they were actually right, but they weren’t proven right. And yes, upon winning a case, the resident is usually reimbursed for their overpayment. But the victims have still been robbed of their time and energy.
 
On top of that, trust in society and the ambition to make the world a little better is also hard to regain that way. Plus, the rent commissions are busy, often too busy to do anything about it in time. And guess who pays these commissions? Exactly: the taxpayer. So these rental companies are not only squeezing money out of tenants but also indirectly out of the Dutch state.