5 ms·

Do I understand correctly that they want to kick out all the students from the cities? When I was studying in Groningen I had to look for places to rent out of

Do I understand correctly that they want to kick out all the students from the cities? When I was studying in Groningen I had to look for places to rent out of the city. Some students were camping in tents in front of the campus. Here is a photo from another city, Tilburg: https://www.dutchnews.nl/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/students-tents.jpg https://www.dutchnews.nl/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/st... Some academic staff were even taking them in due to shortage of places to rent. I managed to rent a very nice place in Bedum, a village 13 km from the university campus, and I was commuting every day on bike.

jhgb 5y ago
> Do I understand correctly that they want to kick out all the students from the cities? Presumably not, unless those students are property investors.
- Isinlor 5y ago
  > investors won't be allowed to buy cheap and medium-priced homes and rent them out So, who will be renting cheap and medium-priced homes? There are already extremely severe shortages as exemplified by students camping in tents.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    People living in them? That's how it mostly works elsewhere. Also, it is not customary in the Netherlands for students to live in dorms?
    - 988747 5y ago
      Right, because that’s what every family dreams about: having a stranger living in their house. Also, if there was enough space in dorms for everyone there wouldn’t be those students camping in tents, as OP wrote.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        There's no need for every family to sublet. Usually a small minority of residences house subletters. I'm not quite sure how worsening the situation for everyone by property investors hoarding houses would make it better for students, either.
        988747 5y ago
        Property investors are not "hoarding" houses. They buy them and then rent them out, thus increasing the supply. It is actually better for students this way: an investor that does not live in their property can rent out it whole. If a house can fit 5 people that means a living space for 5 students. If the house gets bought by a family, that family moves in, so 3 out of 5 spots are now occupied, leaving only 2 available for rent. I don't know, maybe that's the hidden goal of this policy: push the students out, and bring in more families.
        jhgb 5y ago
        > They buy them and then rent out, thus increasing the supply. That doesn't increase supply. I'm really not sure how middlemen skimming money could increase supply since that should push the supply curve to the left. > If the house gets bought by a family, that family moves in, so 3 out of 5 spots are now occupied, leaving only 2 available for rent. And the family moved in from somewhere else, leaving you with three spots in that some other place plus two spots in the new place, so you have 5 places for students regardless. Not sure why you think this changes something. The optimal solution is obviously to fix the dorm system. It's well organized, cheap, and space efficient - at least in my country, at about half the price of renting your own place. Surely my backwards country is not more capable than the Dutch in this respect.
        988747 5y ago
        > And the family moved in from somewhere else, leaving you with three spots in that some other place plus two spots in the new place, so you have 5 places for students regardless. Not sure why you think this changes something. Because that family might have moved from out of town, and students can't move to their old place that is too far from the university? EDIT: I'm not sure that building more dorms is a good idea. My experience (although from totally different country) is that dorm rooms are the worst possible environment for learning. During my time in college there was a clear division: those who prioritized studying lived in the quiet rental apartments, those who prioritized socializing lived in the dorms :)
    - Isinlor 5y ago
      If there was enough rooms I could have rented a tiny room, like a Norwegian prison cell, from a student housing. But there was not enough of these rooms. And they were available only for one year. You had to vacate them after that.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        Presumably the reason for why there isn't enough housing for students is related to why there isn't enough housing for everybody else.
- amelius 5y ago
  You misunderstood. The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. If investors are banned from the city, then students need to buy the house/room they live in. This is of course not feasible for the majority of students.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. You mean in the Netherlands? Because I never had to do that in my country. I'm not aware of places where the only landlords are investors.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Pet_Ant 5y ago
      I think you are missing the point. All landowners are investors. They bought the property to make money. That makes them an investor. Maybe not a coporation but an investor.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        Surely the Dutch are not using your proposed definition, because that would make zero sense unless they wanted to turn the Netherlands into another Chernobyl exclusion zone. That seems unreasonable, so they must be using a different one.
        kalium-xyz 5y ago
        It is the definition we use. This is just gonna create more kafka tier stuff for people to deal with, its not gonna end housing if Amsterdam decides it only wants multi millionaires with privately owned overly expensive houses in certain areas.
      - cutler 5y ago
        Investor or parasite?
- sverhagen 5y ago
  I suppose the implied question is: who's going to rent to students if the landlords' investments get penalized for them not living there themselves. There's presumably too many students in these cities for all of them to find some family who have a spare room to rent.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    Even if this action were to have unintended consequences, the question was "do they want to". No, they don't, obviously, not any more that the people who gave "go" to STS-51L wanted to kill seven astronauts. What they want to do is to get rid of predatory investors.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - timwaagh 5y ago
    There are some very hard limits to taking students in too. You don't want to be a student after the covid induced decline in demand is over. Especially not if you are not from here. The regulation exempt SSH will put you in a room with another student or two and charge you 800 or so.
  - athrowaway3z 5y ago
    The municipality can designate locations where these rules apply and they can designate if a location is intended for student housing. I'm not seeing an issue that is directly exacerbated. There are simply more tools that can be (ab)used .
johndoe0815 5y ago
The trend here in Trondheim (third-largest city in Norway with 200k residents, of these ca. 40k are students) is that a lot of houses and apartments are explicitly offered for sale with plans for conversion to student apartments. Rents in the city have increased by 8.2% over the last 12 months, property prices by 20-25% over the last two years. The price per square meter to buy anything reasonable is above 6k Eur now. Salaries are, of course, not adjusted to compensate for this... So I can understand and support this Dutch initiative, but of course universities and municipalities then have to ensure they provide an appropriate amount student accommodation. Since students are an important economic factor, this doesn't sound to be a too unreasonable demany to me. The Norwegian government also tries a different approach - it tries to enable young people to buy property already in their twenties by funding special discounts on interest rates. Together with banning investors from the cities, this might also be a model for the Netherlands, which, like Norway, has quite a high rate of home ownership (69% NL vs. 81% NO). Some of my recent master students owned an apartment here and made a nice profit when they sold it this year and moved back to Oslo... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/543453/house-owners-among-population-norway/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/543453/house-owners-amon... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/home-ownership-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/home-ownership-rate
- marvin 5y ago
  Everyone is suggesting ineffective solutions with idiotic side effects. The proper way of solving this problem is to build a lot more homes. Otherwise you'll be creating a plan economy where bureaucrats are constantly scrambling to alleviate the side effects of their shuffling of deck-chairs on the sinking ship. But of course, few cities want to do this. The biggest cities in Norway are particularly bad at not even attempting to solve this problem at the root. Let's just say it loudly and proudly: If you're against allowing the free market to build as much as the demand indicates, you're for high housing costs and screw everyone who is negatively affected. This hypocritical virtue signalling has gotten really old.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I can envision a scenario where both are true and result in short term (possibly on the order of decades) pain for locals. The supply of housing is not meeting the demand of local residents and the supply of “desirable” investments in stable societies is not met for global investors. It is an arbitrage and inefficiency scenario created by the ability of capital to move easily around the world, but not people.
MonaroVXR 5y ago
Person living in Groningen right now, as Dutch citizen here. There aren't enough houses for students right now.

jhgb 5y ago

> Do I understand correctly that they want to kick out all the students from the cities? Presumably not, unless those students are property investors.

Isinlor 5y ago
> investors won't be allowed to buy cheap and medium-priced homes and rent them out So, who will be renting cheap and medium-priced homes? There are already extremely severe shortages as exemplified by students camping in tents.
- jhgb 5y ago
  People living in them? That's how it mostly works elsewhere. Also, it is not customary in the Netherlands for students to live in dorms?
  - 988747 5y ago
    Right, because that’s what every family dreams about: having a stranger living in their house. Also, if there was enough space in dorms for everyone there wouldn’t be those students camping in tents, as OP wrote.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      There's no need for every family to sublet. Usually a small minority of residences house subletters. I'm not quite sure how worsening the situation for everyone by property investors hoarding houses would make it better for students, either.
      - 988747 5y ago
        Property investors are not "hoarding" houses. They buy them and then rent them out, thus increasing the supply. It is actually better for students this way: an investor that does not live in their property can rent out it whole. If a house can fit 5 people that means a living space for 5 students. If the house gets bought by a family, that family moves in, so 3 out of 5 spots are now occupied, leaving only 2 available for rent. I don't know, maybe that's the hidden goal of this policy: push the students out, and bring in more families.
        jhgb 5y ago
        > They buy them and then rent out, thus increasing the supply. That doesn't increase supply. I'm really not sure how middlemen skimming money could increase supply since that should push the supply curve to the left. > If the house gets bought by a family, that family moves in, so 3 out of 5 spots are now occupied, leaving only 2 available for rent. And the family moved in from somewhere else, leaving you with three spots in that some other place plus two spots in the new place, so you have 5 places for students regardless. Not sure why you think this changes something. The optimal solution is obviously to fix the dorm system. It's well organized, cheap, and space efficient - at least in my country, at about half the price of renting your own place. Surely my backwards country is not more capable than the Dutch in this respect.
        988747 5y ago
        > And the family moved in from somewhere else, leaving you with three spots in that some other place plus two spots in the new place, so you have 5 places for students regardless. Not sure why you think this changes something. Because that family might have moved from out of town, and students can't move to their old place that is too far from the university? EDIT: I'm not sure that building more dorms is a good idea. My experience (although from totally different country) is that dorm rooms are the worst possible environment for learning. During my time in college there was a clear division: those who prioritized studying lived in the quiet rental apartments, those who prioritized socializing lived in the dorms :)
  - Isinlor 5y ago
    If there was enough rooms I could have rented a tiny room, like a Norwegian prison cell, from a student housing. But there was not enough of these rooms. And they were available only for one year. You had to vacate them after that.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      Presumably the reason for why there isn't enough housing for students is related to why there isn't enough housing for everybody else.
amelius 5y ago
You misunderstood. The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. If investors are banned from the city, then students need to buy the house/room they live in. This is of course not feasible for the majority of students.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. You mean in the Netherlands? Because I never had to do that in my country. I'm not aware of places where the only landlords are investors.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    I think you are missing the point. All landowners are investors. They bought the property to make money. That makes them an investor. Maybe not a coporation but an investor.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      Surely the Dutch are not using your proposed definition, because that would make zero sense unless they wanted to turn the Netherlands into another Chernobyl exclusion zone. That seems unreasonable, so they must be using a different one.
      - kalium-xyz 5y ago
        It is the definition we use. This is just gonna create more kafka tier stuff for people to deal with, its not gonna end housing if Amsterdam decides it only wants multi millionaires with privately owned overly expensive houses in certain areas.
    - cutler 5y ago
      Investor or parasite?
sverhagen 5y ago
I suppose the implied question is: who's going to rent to students if the landlords' investments get penalized for them not living there themselves. There's presumably too many students in these cities for all of them to find some family who have a spare room to rent.
- jhgb 5y ago
  Even if this action were to have unintended consequences, the question was "do they want to". No, they don't, obviously, not any more that the people who gave "go" to STS-51L wanted to kill seven astronauts. What they want to do is to get rid of predatory investors.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- timwaagh 5y ago
  There are some very hard limits to taking students in too. You don't want to be a student after the covid induced decline in demand is over. Especially not if you are not from here. The regulation exempt SSH will put you in a room with another student or two and charge you 800 or so.
- athrowaway3z 5y ago
  The municipality can designate locations where these rules apply and they can designate if a location is intended for student housing. I'm not seeing an issue that is directly exacerbated. There are simply more tools that can be (ab)used .

johndoe0815 5y ago

The trend here in Trondheim (third-largest city in Norway with 200k residents, of these ca. 40k are students) is that a lot of houses and apartments are explicitly offered for sale with plans for conversion to student apartments. Rents in the city have increased by 8.2% over the last 12 months, property prices by 20-25% over the last two years. The price per square meter to buy anything reasonable is above 6k Eur now. Salaries are, of course, not adjusted to compensate for this... So I can understand and support this Dutch initiative, but of course universities and municipalities then have to ensure they provide an appropriate amount student accommodation. Since students are an important economic factor, this doesn't sound to be a too unreasonable demany to me. The Norwegian government also tries a different approach - it tries to enable young people to buy property already in their twenties by funding special discounts on interest rates. Together with banning investors from the cities, this might also be a model for the Netherlands, which, like Norway, has quite a high rate of home ownership (69% NL vs. 81% NO). Some of my recent master students owned an apartment here and made a nice profit when they sold it this year and moved back to Oslo... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/543453/house-owners-among-population-norway/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/543453/house-owners-amon... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/home-ownership-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/home-ownership-rate

marvin 5y ago
Everyone is suggesting ineffective solutions with idiotic side effects. The proper way of solving this problem is to build a lot more homes. Otherwise you'll be creating a plan economy where bureaucrats are constantly scrambling to alleviate the side effects of their shuffling of deck-chairs on the sinking ship. But of course, few cities want to do this. The biggest cities in Norway are particularly bad at not even attempting to solve this problem at the root. Let's just say it loudly and proudly: If you're against allowing the free market to build as much as the demand indicates, you're for high housing costs and screw everyone who is negatively affected. This hypocritical virtue signalling has gotten really old.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I can envision a scenario where both are true and result in short term (possibly on the order of decades) pain for locals. The supply of housing is not meeting the demand of local residents and the supply of “desirable” investments in stable societies is not met for global investors. It is an arbitrage and inefficiency scenario created by the ability of capital to move easily around the world, but not people.

MonaroVXR 5y ago

Person living in Groningen right now, as Dutch citizen here. There aren't enough houses for students right now.