Student Maike Voets (left) and Lina Neuens with their landlord Rik ter Horst. Photo Guy Ackermans Housing minister Mona Keijzer sees taking in lodgers as the ideal solution for the student accommodation shortage. But what is it like renting a room in someone’s home? And how does it feel having a lodger in your home?
Home owners taking in lodgers sounds like something from a nineteenth-century Russian novel. But the Housing minister Mona Keijzer now wants to resurrect this rental option. She sees renting rooms in private homes as a way of solving the student accommodation problem in one fell swoop. About 33 per cent of Dutch people have a room they could rent out, and 8 per cent are actively considering doing that. According to the minister, that could add about 100,000 rooms to the accommodation supply. Now Keijzer wants to start a media campaign to make people more aware of the lodger option. She also wants to make the option more attractive with proposed legislation for temporary rental contracts.
Locally too, efforts are being made to find people willing to rent out rooms. WUR is joining forces with Wageningen municipality and the online platform HospiHousing to persuade people to offer unused rooms to let for students and staff. There is definitely a demand for rooms in private homes, says HospiHousing founder Daan Donkers. ‘There are about 500 people in the Wageningen region looking for a room through our platform.’ The platform also has around 50 landladies/landlords, about half of whom are currently renting out a room. ‘Not everyone rents out rooms for the whole year.’ Some only do so in the summer, for example, or at the start of the new academic year.
Exception
So at the moment, only a small number of WUR students are renting rooms in private homes. Environmental Sciences Bachelor’s student Maike Voets (23) is one of them.
She rents a room from Rik ter Horst in Rhenen, which is quite a cycle ride from campus. ‘I find it OK,’ says Voets. ‘I used to have to cycle half an hour to my secondary school. I might eventually want a room in Wageningen, but I’m not particularly keen on a chaotic student house.’
I’m not keen on a chaotic student house
Maike Voets, Bachelor’s student Environmental Sciences
Some fellow students think it’s crazy for Voets to be living in a house with an older man. ‘That is because many people aren’t familiar with this rental option. But Rik is incredibly nice. We often eat together and it’s sociable. I like having a clean, quiet home. One possible disadvantage compared to a student house is that it’s harder to get to know new people. But I meet a lot of new people through my degree programme and my student society Nji-Sri. This works for me.’
Familiar
Environmental Sciences Bachelor’s student Lina Neuens (19) from Belgium also rents a room in Ter Horst’s house. ‘Living with a landlord is very different to a large anonymous student flat,’ says Neuens. ‘This feels like a home. It feels familiar.’ In fact, she is very happy with her room. ‘Hopefully I can stay here a long while.’
This feels like a home
Lina Neuens, Bachelor’s student Environmental Sciences
The only disadvantage is the distance from the campus. That makes it harder to join a sports club or student society because I don’t like cycling back home alone at night. It would have been perfect for me if Rik’s house had been in Wageningen.’
Neuens also gets the impression lots of students don’t realize renting a room in a private home is an option. She doesn’t think it’s the right solution for everyone, either. ‘This option isn´t for you if you are going to be out partying and getting drunk every night. But it’s the ideal solution for quieter types like me.’
Professor
Incidentally, it’s not just students who rent a room in a private home. The new chairholder in the Philosophy group, Rachel Ankeny, is also doing this. ‘I recently moved from Australia to Wageningen for my new job. My family hasn’t yet joined me.’ Ankeny looked for temporary accommodation via the intranet and found a room in the home of Jochem Jonkman (a PhD advisor in the VLAG graduate school). From that base, she is hunting for a home where she can live with her family.
Ankeny is pleased to be sharing a home with someone who knows the ropes in Wageningen and the university. ‘We also have interests in common, such as food, cooking and supporting new migrants. And the house is big enough for you to do your own thing. He also has two fantastic cats, which makes me feel less lonely. I can’t actually think of any downsides.’
Responsibility
How do the proprietors feel about renting out a room. Jonkman says this isn’t the first time he has done this. ‘When I was doing my PhD research, I often hosted people who came to Wageningen on an exchange. The secretary in our group would ask me if I happened to have a room free for a couple of months. I’ve also had students staying, and a refugee. But I’ve never had a professor in the house before, like Rachel now.’
Jonkman feels a responsibility to help people. ‘There’s a housing shortage and I can help people out temporarily. For instance, last year I had two first-year students temporarily who could only move into their accommodation in October. Otherwise they would have been commuting for two and a half hours.’
Privacy
Although he enjoys having people in his home, Jonkman also likes to be alone sometimes. ‘That’s why I prefer to have people renting for a fixed period. That means it stays a fun way to get to know people from all over the world. You always learn something about the culture of the people you have living with you.’
It’s a fun way to get to know people from all over the world
Landlord Jochem Jonkman
Jonkman says you do have less privacy when you rent out a room in your house. ‘That’s why I’ve set up a special privacy room where I can retreat to, for example to work or read a book.’ How smoothly things go varies depending on the tenant. ‘It all goes well automatically with some people, but with others you need to draw up a cleaning schedule, and make agreements and have discussions about the simplest things.’
Big house
Rik ter Horst, who currently rents out rooms to the WUR students Voets and Neuens, hasn’t been doing this for very long. ‘My wife and I bought this house when I was still a WUR student. Our children grew up here. My wife passed away three years ago, and my youngest son left home a year ago. My house is pretty big for just me, but I don’t want to move. It’s a nice place and one of my children lives close by with the grandchildren. So I thought about taking lodgers. I started last year, renting out one room to a young student. Now I’m renting out two rooms.’
My house is pretty big for just me
Landlord Rik ter Horst
It makes the place more lively when you rent out rooms to students, says Ter Horst. ‘The three of us often eat together, which is nice. And of course you have more money coming in. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea if you find privacy really important, but I always think to myself: I’ve got my bedroom for that. If I want to meditate in the living room, I just let them know. They’re fine with that; after all, they need to study.’
Lodger facts
- In the larger cities, renting a room as a lodger is much cheaper than standard rents. In Amsterdam, the most expensive city, monthly rents for lodgers are 435 euros less on average. In Wageningen, you pay 338 euros a month on average as a lodger, which is 21 euros less than the average rent for an ordinary room.
- The majority of people looking to rent as a lodger are students (76 per cent).
- Research by the Ministry of Housing shows that 33 per cent of Dutch people have rooms suitable for renting out to lodgers. About 2 per cent of Dutch people say they definitely want to take in lodgers and another 6 per cent are considering this option.
- This potential supply of accommodation often remains unused because mortgage providers don’t allow homeowners with mortgages to have tenants. That is because houses with sitting tenants sell for less.
- You don’t need a permit to take in lodgers. However, the rooms must be at least 12m² and you can’t have more than two lodgers. You also need a rental contract and the place must satisfy fire safety regulations. Landlords do not have to pay tax on the first 5,998 euros per year they earn in rent (2024).
