Students
Broken window at Winscho Photo by Reyer Boxem

Where is SSH when you need them?

Intruders and trash everywhere

Broken window at Winscho Photo by Reyer Boxem
Vandalism, theft, and sketchy dudes in your house: SSH isn’t doing anything about it and barely responds to complaints, say the residents of student house Winscho and other properties. ‘The security team is never there when we need it.’
29 January om 12:00 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 29 January 2025
om 12:07 uur.
January 29 at 12:00 PM.
Last modified on January 29, 2025
at 12:07 PM.
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Door Rob van der Wal

29 January om 12:00 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 29 January 2025
om 12:07 uur.
Avatar photo

By Rob van der Wal

January 29 at 12:00 PM.
Last modified on January 29, 2025
at 12:07 PM.
Avatar photo

Rob van der Wal

Rob begon als student-redacteur bij UKrant en is sinds mei 2023 terug als vaste medewerker. Hij schrijft nieuwsberichten, achtergrondartikelen – met een voorkeur voor wetenschap – en houdt zich bezig met internationaliseringszaken. Daarnaast werkt Rob als freelance wetenschapsjournalist. In zijn vrije tijd is hij drummer, radiomaker en moestuinier. Meer »
Rob started as a student editor at UKrant and has been back as a regular contributor since May 2023. He writes news stories, background articles – with a preference for science – and covers internationalisation issues. Rob also works as a freelance science journalist. In his spare time, he is a drummer, radio producer and vegetable gardener. More »

‘He woke me up with his screaming’, one of the residents at Winscho writes in the group app at ten minutes to four on the morning of December 30. An intruder, probably a homeless guy, has come back to the international student residence at the Winschoterdiep for the fourth time. The man yells things, is aggressive, and breaks a window near the entrance using a rock. 

He was also there on December 8, breaking a window in one of the kitchens to gain entrance. Residents found him sleeping in the women’s restroom. On December 10, the man came back twice: he played his harmonica and yelled at residents in the middle of the night. 

The residents say the police are useless. All they do is send the man away. But they’re mainly unhappy with SSH, the company they’re renting from: in an email, the corporation says that the residents themselves are responsible for preventing break-ins. They do nothing to help them.

Not taken seriously

Groningen students have been complaining about housing corporation SSH, a national chain with offices in six cities, for years. When the residents at Winscho were being harassed by an exhibitionist masturbating in front of their windows in late 2022 and early 2023, they didn’t feel the corporation took them seriously, either. 

SSH knew about the situation, but I had to beg for help

‘SSH knew about the situation, but I had to beg them for help. I’ve sent countless emails and called them so many times. I spent I don’t know how many hours just trying to get someone to talk to me’, one of the residents told UKrant at the time.

‘The manager was hardly ever in’, another said. ‘The only response we got from SSH was an email that told us to lock our doors, close the emergency exit. And that they were sorry this was happening.’ 

The Winscho residents aren’t the only tenants unhappy with SSH. ‘We had a break-in in the bike shed a few weeks ago because locks are not working, and for months now someone has been regularly throwing garbage into the atrium’, says a student who lives in SSH complex Upsilon in Paddepoel. According to him, hardly anything had been done. ‘Of course they need to catch the person red-handed, but right now they’re not doing anything to stop it. The SSH keeps saying new locks are unavailable.’

The central entrance at Winscho. Photo by Reyer Boxem

Focusing on the wrong things

The SSH properties do have security, but the residents say they’re fairly useless. Security staff didn’t show up to Winscho until several hours after the intruder had left. 

Winscho resident Layla Cobley also says security focuses on the wrong things. ‘You could ask every student in the SSH building about the security team, and they will tell you that they only ever really come by whenever there’s a noise complaint, or when it’s 10 p.m. and we’re being a bit too loud. But they’re never there when we need them.’

The Upsilon resident agrees that the security team mainly focuses on the students themselves. ‘We had a small gathering of eight people in our flat and were playing a game during a birthday party. Suddenly, someone was standing in our kitchen, asking us to leave because there were more than four people in the kitchen after 10 p.m. My feeling is that security is only looking at the tenants, who pay for the security, but they don’t look at people trespassing in the building.’

Doubling security

Spokesperson Lisa Plender says SSH has taken action at the Winschoterdiep after the incidents. ‘We doubled security and scaled up our efforts in December. Security used to be on site three days a week; it’s now six. Occasionally, the security staff will be in the building to answer any questions residents might have.’

My feeling is that security is only looking at the tenants

Layla confirms she’s seen security around more. ‘But I’m pretty sure they clock out at around midnight or 1 a.m.’ They did so, too, in 2023 when the exhibitionist was around: the man would only show up after security had left. She’d prefer permanent security around the building, including during the night. 

Law student and Winscho resident Alessandro Mastrangelo agrees. ‘Maybe put someone specific outside, to better monitor who is getting inside the building.’

View of the garden at Winscho. Photo by Reyer Boxem

Poor communication

Concerning the email that said the residents had to call the police or go up to the intruders themselves, Plender says: ‘We probably could have communicated this better, or differently. Residents certainly aren’t responsible for the issues, but they could help solve them by calling the police in a timely fashion or sharing any footage they might have. They should also lock their doors and make sure intruders don’t follow them inside.’

Complaints about the housing corporation’s communication skills are nothing new. In 2016, SSH, which at the time had been in charge of housing international students in Groningen for just over a year, received a score of 1.77 out of 5 for the way it handled complaints. Students were unhappy with them.

In order to improve communication, among other things, SSH devised a plan in July of 2020: they would set up a tenants association, together with the Groningen Student Union and the Erasmus Student Network. The association, which was to consist of SSH residents, would be consulting on how to handle fines in case of noise complaints, communication towards residents, and how SSH properties could be made to look more welcoming, starting in 2021.

But the plan never came to fruition. ‘We wrote to all the students living in SSH properties, but they weren’t interested in participating’, says Plender.

Slow to fix things

Not much has changed since then, it seems. International students today still complain about how hard it is to reach SSH, and it takes much too long for them to fix things. In 2023, the Winscho residents experienced issues with their Wi-Fi. After months of waiting and more than fifteen requests to fix it, nothing had changed. That same year, the lights in the car park went out, and it took ages before SSH came up with a solution.  

We responded to the emails about the locks within 48 hours

And a month after the homeless intruder broke the kitchen window in December, there’s still just a wooden board across the frame, and the window next to the entrance still has a hole in it.

Nevertheless, SSH says it responded quickly in several cases. ‘We received three emails about the locks at Upsilon, for instance, and we responded to those within 48 hours’, says Plender. ‘Besides, it’s only the electric lock that’s broken; the regular lock still works.’

New resident board

But the housing corporation wants to take the residents’ complaints about their poor communication skills seriously. ‘We’re glad this is reaching us now. We’ll discuss it internally to see how we can improve our communication’, says Plender. ‘And we’ll endeavour to respond as quickly as possible to any reports from residents.’

One tool to aid them in this is the new resident board that SSH is working on in Groningen. This will consist of several tenants who will be in charge of certain things at the student complexes. They’ll be in regular contact with SSH and organise activities for the residents. The board will be supported by BoKS, the new overarching tenant organisation, a national initiative by SSH.

In the meantime, it’s been quiet at Winscho for almost a month. But Layla is still a little nervous. ‘There was a three week gap between December 10 and 30 as well, so who’s to say the homeless guy won’t come back?’

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