At this point, it is not a surprise anymore that students have astonishing bad experiences with finding appropriate housing in Maastricht these days. One could thereof assume that the University’s ideas and actions to tackle these unpleasant circumstances have a considerable impact during the crisis. However, this story describes the outrageous experience a student had with the housing in ‘Salernolaan’; though now called ‘Sorbonnelaan’.
‘We were told the building would be ready for students to move in August 2020. However, when I first got to see the apartment, it was around the 10. September and classes had already started two weeks ago. The pictures we got of how our studios would look like were not how the studios ended up looking in a lot of ways. We could not visit the studios before moving in as they were still under construction. In fact, a month before when many tried to visit, we were denied access to the set-up building. The surrounding areas were only finished about half a year after we moved in, meaning the parking lots, bike spaces and ways to get to the apartment.
The first address we got (Salernolaan) didn’t exist, so we had issues receiving our mail. The studios are not registered as separate studios in the municipality which caused a lot of confusion, for instance for postmen. Because of that, mainly letters from the municipality or other Dutch authorities can’t include our studio numbers, so letters get lost. Packages and letters sometimes never showed up, even there were supposedly delivered to our studio.
We were informed about the address change from mail delivery companies and way later from Camelot. I believe Camelot changed the company name a week ago, I don’t remember the new one.
To continue, there is no entrance space or anything where our packages can be delivered or left. We are not allowed to leave them in the corridors due to safety reasons. Ultimately this means that we need to order our packages to pick up stations. For UPS the closest one is 15 minutes away by bus.
There have been big issues because our studio is too small to count as independent for the Netherlands. Thus, we were technically not allowed to have a kitchenette of our own. We do have one and the issue seems to be resolved but for months it was unclear whether we’re allowed to keep our kitchenette or not, keeping in mind that there are no communal kitchens.
Before moving in and signing the contract we were told that there would be communal kitchens on each floor, apart from our own kitchenettes. These are now empty rooms, in the size of ours (12-13m^2), so how would this be a communal kitchen? On top of that, these rooms are locked and there is no electricity.
One of these rooms on the ground floor became the office of the caretaker, however. The new caretaker doesn’t communicate in English but only Dutch in the group chat, despite most of us (more than 3/4) being international students who don’t speak Dutch. In the beginning, the caretaker was only available on Thursdays for half of the day. I should also mention that our common spaces on the ground floor were always damaged, dirty and cleaning service was done insufficiently to the minimum. These weren’t even planned to be common spaces, in the beginning, they were supposed to function as bike shelters. Apart from that, the rent you pay for such a 12m^2 studio is way above what the average student should have to pay.
For more than six months I’m on the waiting list for Bassin Housing as I could not find anything else that was affordable and in acceptable conditions. Every other apartment I looked at refused to accept me as a tenant, due to the high demand here in Maastricht. Until then I do pay rent for my current home in Salernolaan, though I do not spend time there unless I can avoid it by any means, due to all the circumstances indicated above. This means I live with my parents again, back in Germany, far away from Maastricht. If we are not obliged to participate in in-person tutorials or write exams physically in the MECC, I do not come to Maastricht or live here actively. All of this burdened me with a lot of additional costs and an unpleasant housing experience for my first year of studying in Maastricht, leading up to me not really participating in student life and commuting between Maastricht and Germany.’
Anonymous (Maastricht University 2nd year student)
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