Students who have not been able to find a room in or around Eindhoven before 1 August are asked to stay away by the Technical University.
The university magazine Cursor reports this. International students who want to come to Eindhoven for their studies in September received a letter from the university board in June with the urgent advice to stay away if they have not found accommodation by August 1.
The university did this because there is no available solution for the housing crisis that the region is facing. The construction whereby international students were given a rental contract for a year and had to find accommodation themselves during the year has stalled. Nicole Ummelen, the vice-chairman of the TU/e Executive Board, sees that.
Alternatives
“We see that many of these students do not succeed in finding alternative acomodation within a year. This means that they continue to occupy the units that we need for new internationals. It is difficult for us to put them out on the street hen the year’s contract ends” says Ummelen.
Director of student affairs, Patrick Groothuis, explains that everything starts with the shortage in the housing market. “Previously, we were able to offer about forty per cent of international students a landing place for one or two years from student housing that we as a university guarantee ourselves,” says Groothuis.
“The remaining sixty per cent found independent housing. It is now much more difficult for people to to find something to move on to, which has further widened the gap between supply and demand and TU/e can no longer make that forty percent offer.”
Ten per cent
Those percentages look very different now, in 2022. The university can now only help five to ten per cent of international students with housing. In the short term, TU/e , therefore, wants to put up temporary housing.
“There are two locations on campus for this,” says Groothuis. “We are looking at it together with a group of students. This is also being discussed with the municipality, in connection with the required permits.”
Horizon
Van Ummelen says that in the slightly longer term there is also a light on the horizon. The two new residential towers to be erected on the campus in 2024 are also intended to end the current problems. Together, the residential towers should provide around 700 homes. “But until then, it will remain an enormous challenge for us,” says Ummelen.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Aysenur
