‘I’ve been checking the Facebook groups for weeks’, says Lukas Blech (25) from Germany. He’s currently doing a bachelor’s programme at Maastricht University and hopes to start his master’s in Governance of Sustainability in September. But first, he has to find a room.

‘I was going to find something in The Hague with my girlfriend, but my plans changed. By then, it was too late to apply for housing through the university, so now I check Facebook every 10 or 15 minutes. You have be the first one to comment on an ad, otherwise your message gets buried in all the other comments. And you also just have to be lucky.’

Italian student Chiara Migliore (22), who is moving to Leiden for a master's in developmental psychology, confirms this. ‘I sent in my application in February. The deadline is in May so I thought I was quite early. But a week later, I received an e-mail from the university saying that all the rooms it offered to internationals were already taken and that I had to find a place myself. I started looking right away.

Bad luck

‘I’m lucky I already know people in the Netherlands. My boyfriend is studying in Delft and is helping me find accommodation. He knows how hard it is. I sent tons of messages to advertisers, but I received only two replies. I tried to rent a flat together with two girls, but the landlord suddenly stopped responding so I think he rented it to someone else.’

 Finally, it seems like Blech’s Facebook strategy might actually pay off. He receives word from a property manager that a room is available for him in The Hague, near Zuiderpark. It gives him peace of mind, he says. No more obsessively checking the ‘Leiden Housing’ group.

But it was too good to be true.

A few days later, the German student informs us that he will not be moving there after all. Upon viewing the room, it turned out to be in a dilapidated state and looked nothing like the picture in the ad. Back to Facebook. The search continues.

A few days later, the German student informs us that he will not be moving there after all. Upon viewing the room, it turned out to be in a dilapidated state and looked nothing like the picture in the ad. Back to Facebook. The search continues.

The university only has a limited number of rooms available every year, as Blech and Migliore learned. Student housing provider DUWO assigns the rooms on a first-come, first-served basis. Some are lucky enough to get a room immediately upon application, others are simply too late, but a lucky few are put on a waiting list and get a room at a later date. Such is the case of American Anna Perry (24), who is now in the first year of her master's programme in astronomy.

‘I was assigned a room via the waiting list about a month and a half before I would be moving, so that was pretty close. I already had a plane ticket booked, but I didn’t have a place to sleep yet. This was the case for a lot of my fellow students.

‘It is a very nice room though, especially for a student accommodation. The only thing is that the kitchen is a bit small.’

Scammers

Still, Perry will have to leave her room in August. In order to offer new students a room in September, internationals are only given a one-year or two-years rental contract by DUWO. After that, they have to find something on their own.

For Perry, the uncertainty about her living situation is starting all over again. ‘I knew it would only be for a year, but I’m still not happy about it. I’m hoping to find something nice, but as the months go by, I’m increasingly tempted to accept anything I can get, even outside Leiden.’

Not all internationals are upset about having to leave their DUWO room. Bulgarian linguistics student Elitsa Davidova (19), was offered the possibility of extending her lease if she became a student caretaker in her building. She chose not to. ‘I don’t mind sharing a house, but I’m currently sharing a bedroom with someone else. I do want to sleep separately so that’s the reason why I didn’t sign up as a student caretaker.’ She too has taken to Facebook again.

There, another danger lurks: scammers offering non-existent rooms. ‘I’ve seen a lot of them’, says Davidova. ‘But I think I’m careful enough to be able to deal with them. If they don’t want to send you an address or pictures of the room, it’s an obvious scam. But I know that some students just pay without having seen anything.’

And some students searching from abroad will indeed have no other choice.

Blech has encountered scammers as well. ‘I notice a lot of them. There was one that I suspected was a scammer but I still responded because I was desperate. Unfortunately, it did turn out to be a scam.’

 Quitting is not an option

Out of all the students Mare spoke to, Migliore is the only one who has actually managed to land a room already. The others are still on the hunt. Interestingly, none of them have a good backup plan for when they are still homeless at the start of the academic year. ‘My sister lives in The Hague’, says Davidova. ‘I might stay with her for a week or two until I find something, or move into an expensive place for a short time just to bridge the gap. But I'm optimistic.’

‘Quitting my studies in not an option’, says Perry. ‘I just have to find something, even though it might not be a good place. I have enough of a network here that I could surf couches for a while. It’s so frustrating because Leiden is such a good university, but there’s so little support to find housing. And if you don’t speak the language, it’s twice as hard.’

Some students have given up. Several internationals that Mare approached for an interview said they wanted to cooperate, but later informed us that they decided against it because they had changed their minds and would not be coming to Leiden for their studies after all. The main reason they gave for this change of heart was uncertainty about the living situation.