Students wait up to FIVE years to get a room in these Dutch student cities

That's longer than a degree 😭

The housing crisis in the Netherlands is bad for everyone. But with the influx of foreign students, a shortage of adequate student housing, skyrocketing rent, and having no income, university students struggle more than most.

A solution to the problem is student housing portals like ROOM.nl, where students are allocated a room or studio (from a corporation like DUWO) in their university city based on their registration time.

This means that the longer a student has been registered with the site, the higher their position in the ranking and the greater their chance of getting a room. 

Sounds good, right? Right, except waiting times are getting out of hand.

Longer than a bachelor’s degree

As NU.nl reports, the average time students have to be registered with student housing providers to obtain accommodation is 3.5 years.

A Dutch bachelor’s degree program lasts three years — so yes, students are often finished with their studies before they’re even eligible for accommodation.

READ MORE | Why is there a housing shortage in the Netherlands? The Dutch housing crisis explained

And those numbers just keep increasing. Why? Because there is just too little accommodation for students, and the rooms that we do have are often kept occupied by recent graduates who cannot afford to move on to a starter home.

In some cities, like Leiden, Delft, and Eindhoven, the situation is especially bad. Here, students have to wait over five years to qualify for adequate student housing.

Student-housing-wait-times-leiden-room-nl-screenshot
I have been registered on ROOM.nl since October 2018, yet 24 others would be eligible to rent this Leiden studio before me. Image: DutchReview (screenshot from ROOM.nl)

If you want a real chance of getting a student room or studio in the Netherlands, you have to sign up long before you even enrol in university.

READ MORE | ‘No internationals’: A tale of exclusion in the Dutch housing market

For many internationals who have no idea about the housing crisis until they get here, that’s not an option. They’re often left paying extortionate rents in the free sector.

Waiting times depend on location

The situation is bad in every student city in the Netherlands, but some places have it much worse than others. 👇

CityWaiting time for a student room (in years)
Tilburg2.9
Groningen3
Breda3.4
Wageningen3.5
Rotterdam3.8
The Hague3.8
Amsterdam4.9
Eindhoven5.1
Delft5.2
Leiden5.3

Now what?

As chairman Jolan de Bie from Kences, a research centre for student housing, tells NU, there is a plan for action.

“The goal is to build 60,000 new student homes by 2030,” she says. “We are well on our way, but there is still much to be done to meet the goals.”

Did you study in the Netherlands? What’s your experience with student housing? Share them in the comments!

Feature Image:Freepik
Lyna Meyrer 🇱🇺
Lyna Meyrer 🇱🇺
Say 'hoi' to Lyna, our Senior Writer at DutchReview! Fueled by a love for writing, social media, and all things Dutch, she joined the DR family in 2022. Since making the Netherlands her home in 2018, she has collected a BA in English Literature & Society (Hons.) and an RMA in Arts, Literature and Media (Hons.). Even though she grew up just a few hours away from the Netherlands, Lyna remains captivated by the guttural language, quirky culture, and questionable foods that make the Netherlands so wonderfully Dutch.

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