Background
One landlord carried this
Neglected maintenance, unannounced house inspections, letting fees for vague services, high rent, bullying and even threats: today, the ChristenUnie is to submit a “black paper” to Pieter van Woensel, the alderman responsible for Spatial Planning.
Petra Meijer
Wednesday 6 February 2013

“There are some extreme cases”, remarks Mart Keuning, the party chairman of the Leiden section of the ChristenUnie party. “We received a report about a landlord who walked around the house with a cocked pistol, because he wanted to move back into the building. And then there was a landlord who rubbed dog-shit on the walls and one who punctured bike tyres. But there are dozens about high letting agency fees and bad maintenance. And that’s what it’s like for many tenants in Leiden having to cope with this tight housing market every day.”

According to Keuning, the complaints stem from two sorts of problems: first of all, tenants on the private market can find almost nothing without a letting agency. “And they often charge high fees for all sorts of vague services. And some of the contracts are dodgy too. For instance, some tenants have to promise not to call in the rent assessment committee, not to ask for a reduction of the rent and not to demand repairs.” These promises are not legal. “But what can you do? If you don’t want it, there are ten others who do”, he explains.

Which is why the ChristenUnie party is calling for a licensing system: “There should be a strict set of rules for letting agencies, so they charge regular prices for their services and can’t push up the prices of rooms and apartments unnecessarily. We’ve noticed that shady agencies vanish as a matter of course in other towns when licences are introduced.”

The landlords are the other problem: “We know of plenty of cases where hardly any maintenance is done, or none at all, where landlords walk in without permission or even try to bully the tenants into leaving if they have other plans for the building. Residents suddenly have to put up with a Polish pot-head for a flatmate, or someone plays extremely loud music all the time. Tenants can report it to the rent assessment committee, but that can take months and the police are often not acquainted with tenants’ rights. The current authorities need to work together more and there should be a central hotline so that people can take action sooner”, claims Keuning.

More than eighteen months ago, in response to a feature in Mare, Pieter van Woensel, the alderman responsible for Spatial Planning, agreed that there were landlord issues. “You know that some landlords are abusing the situation and the students don’t do anything about it because they feel intimidated”, he said at the time, calling for a hotline where tenants could report complaints.

“Although the council set up a hotline, they don’t put enough effort into it”, says Christiaan Harinck, a job-sharing councillor for the ChristenUnie Party. Van Woensel claims that much has been achieved in the past eighteen months, such as inspections of several buildings, but he admits that there still a number of bad situations “It is a major issue that demands attention, but I’ll wait for the black paper and the council committee debate before I say anything substantial on the subject.”