They came to Groningen anyway
‘Landlords want to meet you in person’
Door Yuling Chang
By Yuling Chang
Yuling Chang
Garry Oak (18)
Spain
Garry had also been accepted to a university in Ireland, which meant he had a plan B in case he couldn’t find a place to live in Groningen. But he preferred to start his bachelor in international relations at the UG, so he settled for renting a room for six months.
‘My sister helped me search’, he says. ‘We were working round the clock between April and August.’ During that time period, they each sent at least forty messages a day, but Garry soon realised that people hardly ever responded to prospective tenants who weren’t in Groningen and able to physically view the room.
The temporary room he found is a half-hour bus ride away from the city centre, but he’s just happy to be able to study here at all. ‘I do have to keep looking though, otherwise I’ll be homeless in six months after all.’
Yvonne Yu (25)
Taiwan
Yvonne is the optimistic sort: she’s subletting a room for two months and is confident she’ll find something else before that time is up. ‘I’m sure that if I can attend a viewing in person, I’ll have a better chance of getting the room.’
It’s a tip she got from friends who’ve been studying in Groningen for a while. ‘I’m still worried about the room shortage, but one of my friends ended up finding a place after she’d already come to Groningen.’
Yvonne started searching as soon as the UG let her know she’d been accepted to the master film and contemporary audiovisual media. But even though she was early, she couldn’t find permanent housing. ‘I’ve tried everything: Facebook groups, agencies, websites, group chats. I wrote so many messages.’
In the end, she found a place to stay for two months. ‘I’ll keep looking. If I can’t find anything I might have to move in with my friend for a while, but that’s plan B.’
Stefan Mandita (22)
Romania
‘I’m currently couch-surfing at a friend’s house’, says Stefan. He’s starting his final year as a game design student at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. He isn’t new to couch-surfing: this is his third time this year. Over the past three years, he’s lived in seven different places, never for longer than eight months. In most cases, he was only able to stay for a few weeks or three months, at the most.
Stefan came to Groningen in 2019 and ended up in the city emergency shelter. He soon found a room but lost it when the Covid pandemic started and he had to return to Romania. He was still paying rent for the room, but when he returned to Groningen in 2021, he found that the landlord had evicted him anyway and had thrown out his possessions.
That’s how Stefan ended up in emergency housing once more, this time in a large dorm. ‘It was awful, I didn’t have any privacy whatsoever’, he says.
His entire second year of his studies took place online, but that wasn’t an option last year, nor is it this year. That meant he was forced to either return to Groningen or continue his studies at a different institute. ‘Renters want to meet you in person; if you only talk to them on the phone, they won’t give you the room.’
Sebastian Lazăr (19)
Romania
‘If I hadn’t come to Groningen, I would’ve just been stuck at home doing nothing for a year’, says Sebastian, who’ll be studying communication & multimedia design at the Hanze. They – Sebastian is non-binary – hadn’t come up with an alternative plan.
Like most newcomers, Sebastian started looking online for a room, but the only people who responded turned out to be scammers. In the end, they came to Groningen to stay in the Student Hotel for a week and see landlords in person. But the housing crisis was worse than they’d expected.
Sebastian was invited to view a small room in a student house in the centre. The room cost 500 euros a month. ‘But the kitchen was disgusting. It wasn’t somewhere I want to be cooking and eating.’ On top of that, the roof looked ready to collapse.
Sebastian ended up finding a place to live for six months in Heiligerlee, a village close to the small city of Winschoten. It takes them an hour to get to Groningen on public transport. Each return ticket costs 25 euros, but it was either that or stay in Romania. ‘I wanted to start my new life as a student in Groningen.’