A plethora of new initiatives are under way in Amsterdam to provide housing for students, but most are too expensive for the average student, the Parool reports.

The Student Hotel, Villa Mokum and StudentExperience complexes offer luxury rooms with private bathrooms. Rents start at €480 excluding service costs of €100 a month.

These fees are not only high for students living on grants and loans, but make the property too expensive to qualify for housing benefit, the paper points out. The under-23s only qualify for housing benefit if their home has its own address and the rent is below €389 a month.

‘It is dramatic,’ Ronald Paping of the tenants’ organisation Woonbond told the paper. ‘Students are being hit by all sorts of cuts and now they have to borrow money to find somewhere to live. In the end they will live at home and add to rush-hour commuting problems.’

Profiteering

Vincent Buitenhuis of student housing organisation Kences Foundation told the paper the prices are so high that they border on ‘a new form of profiteering’.

‘Everyone should be able to study in Amsterdam. Not just those with rich parents,’ said Noeri van den Berg, of the Amsterdam student associaion ASVA.

According to student housing group Duwo, the city faces a 16,000 shortage of student beds in the coming years.