Container housing on the Haarweg. Photo Joris Schaap The Haarweg student housing complex is the property of the university, but its management has been outsourced. After ten years of being managed by HEYDAY, the Wolf Huisvestingsgroep took over after winning a European tendering process.
The transition was not entirely without blemish, a survey shows. Tenant Lily Delamare (22) experienced several issues in her container studio. ‘The refrigerator was broken and leaked for weeks. I sent the new managers an email with pictures requesting a repair. Two days later, I was told they would come to fix it soon, but it took weeks.’ In the meantime, the sink started leaking. ‘Another tenant had a stove that did not work at all. They had to wait a week and a half before it was repaired and were unable to cook the entire time.’
Too much effort
Delamare is not the only one. In the Haarweg 333 Facebook group, several tenants sounded the alarm. Rick Keizer decided to start a WhatsApp group to facilitate communication between the Haarweg tenants. The group shows complaints about broken shutters that fail to open for weeks on end, rooms that experience regular power loss, leaking sinks and much more. There is also much dissatisfaction over the communications with Wolf. The emergency number appears not to be available 24/7, and response to emails is erratic and slow. ‘Unless you report a payment issue, then they respond within the hour’, Keizer states.
The most recent communications issue occurred on Wednesday, 1 December, when the entire G-block, made up of fifty studios, was without water for two to three hours. ‘Someone’s pipes were being repaired, but sending an email to the tenants to warn them their water would be cut off was too much effort, apparently.’
Fragile mechanism
Floris Maasdam of Wolf Huisvestingsgroep is one of the new managers. He agrees that the transition did not go entirely without a hitch. ‘There were over forty repair requests in the first week that had not been addressed prior to us taking over. We used this first week to discover what parties were best suited to tackle the issues. That did not go as smoothly as we would have liked, but the bulk has now been solved, and adequate procedures are now in place. Everything is running a lot smoother now.
The fact that the housing is aged and has remained in place longer than originally intended is not helpful, says Maasdam. ‘This results in an increased number of reports from tenants. Moreover, this may also cause delays in repairs. In the shutters, for example. The mechanism is quite obsolete and fragile, and parts are not readily available. It takes a while to order spare parts. We have now set up a supply of spare parts.’
24/7
Maasdam agrees with Keizer’s plea to inform tenants ahead of time if the water is to be shut off. ‘We were not informed by the technicians that this was going to happen. We have now asked the maintenance teams to call us before shutting off water or electricity so that we can inform the tenants.’
The housing manager denies that the emergency number is not reachable all the time. ‘Between nine and five, all calls are redirected to me. After five, you get a selection menu. If you select 1 or 9, your call is forwarded to someone who can dispatch repair staff at night if there is an emergency. We recently had a serious leakage, and we had someone repair it at midnight.’
Maasdam hopes the tenants will come to the consultation hours. ‘Or, they can send an email that they wish to call so that we can discuss their issues personally.’
