Affordable rent act costing students their homes: report

The Affordable Housing Act, meant to protect tenants against exorbitant rents, is costing students their homes, NRC reports after surveying the rental teams of eight student cities. Landlords aren’t allowing students to replace roommates who moved out so they can empty the house and sell it, among other things.

When Illeen’s one housemate moved out this summer, her landlord gave her and her other housemate two options. Either they had to pay the monthly rent of almost 2,500 euros on their own, or they had to leave their Amsterdam apartment within a month. In the email, the landlord balmed the Affordable Rent Act, calling it “a terrible law that causes a lot of misery, but which we have to adhere to.”

Johanna lives with six other students in a house in the center of Delft. She has a permanent rental contract, but the landlord won’t allow new roommates to get a permanent lease. “If a housemate moves out, someone else can only move in on a contract for a maximum of two years. And once those temporary contracts expire, no new housemates may be chosen,” she told NRC. “In this way, the house will slowly bleed dry.”

The rental teams - points of contact subsidized by the municipalities to help with landlord issues - in Amsterdam, Delft, Eindhoven, Groningen, Leiden, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht all reported receiving a striking number of similar reports. The teams in Amsterdam, Groningen, and Nijmegen reported a significant increase. The landlord doesn’t always say why students or other house sharers have to leave or can’t get new roommates, but when they do, it is often because they want to sell the property. Many explicitly blame the Affordable Rent Act.

“There is even a landlord with dozens of properties in Amsterdam who sent all his tenants the same letter, stating that he wants them to leave,” Gert Jan Bakker of Amsterdam rental team !WOON told NRC.

The Affordable Rent Act extended the points system that already applied to social housing to mid-range rentals with rents between 880 and 1,158 euros per month. The points system sets a maximum rent based on what the home offers in terms of size, facilities, and sustainability, among other things. Landlords mainly see it as a limitation of the rental income.

The law also tightened the definition of an “independent home.” According to Bakker, that is part of the problem now facing students and other home sharers. “As of July 1, you may rent an independent home to a maximum of two people. From three tenants, you may no longer rent the home for one (high) rent price, but you must give everyone and individual room rental contract.” A different points system applies to rooms than to independent homes, often reducing rental income.

Student housing disappearing into the owner-occupied market is a big issue given the Netherlands’ student housing shortage. This academic year, the Netherlands has a shortage of 23,100 student homes, according to the National Student Housing Monitor published last week.

Municipalities have concrete construction plans for 16,8000 additional student homes up to 2033. But even if all these construction plans become a reality, the student housing shortage could increase to over 42,000 homes in the 2031/32 academic year in the worst-case scenario.