Court orders man with 60 snakes to leave Gelderland rental

The court in Gelderland has evicted a man with 60 snakes from his social housing rental. The man’s neighbors have been having trouble with mice, and conversations with the housing association had little result. The court gave the man four weeks to leave the home, according to the ruling published earlier this month.

Housing association ProWonen received the first complaints about mice in 2024. The housing association visited the man and found that the rental property was littered with all kinds of animal food and old bird cages. During the inspection, the housing association also discovered containers with dozens of pythons in the attic.

In the following months, ProWonen tried to speak with the man, but according to the housing association, “he repeatedly refused to cooperate in finding a solution.” So the housing association took the matter to court.

The man argued that he was breeding the snakes as a hobby and planned to continue doing so for another five years. He was trying to “bring together certain genes,” he said. He argued that he was allowed to keep pets in the home as long as they didn’t cause a nuisance and that there was no proof that his neighbor’s mice problem came from him. His snakes’ food is kept in drums, he said. He added that the snakes involved were ball pythons, which are not dangerous.

The court ruled in the housing association’s favor. The court couldn’t assess whether or not the snakes were dangerous. But dangerous or not, “if residents knew that there were 60 pythons in the house, it would cause unrest.”

“The fact that the defendant is allowed to keep animals in the rental property is not the issue in this case. While that is indeed permitted, it must be done within certain limits and in accordance with the rules that apply between the defendant and ProWonen,” the court said. “The way the defendant currently keeps snakes falls outside those limits and rules because it is in a commercial manner.”

The man had also had previous warnings, the court said, referring to a previous attempt by ProWonen to get the man evicted through the court after complaints about his birds in 2013 and 2016.

The court ruled that the man must vacate the home with his animals within four weeks.