Success in Nijmegen council: prospect of more student houses

Last night, DWARS Arnhem-Nijmegen, together with the Young Democrats, the Young Socialists and student union AKKU, campaigned for more student houses in Nijmegen. And with success: the council blocked a motion calling for a stop to boarding houses and called on SSH& to build more student houses.

In the hour and a half before the council meeting, some twenty angry young people sat in front of the Nijmegen City Hall with boxes, sleeping bags and banners to draw attention to the growing shortage of student housing in Nijmegen. Last year alone, Radboud University grew by some 2,000 students, and quite a few of them are international students. They have an extra hard time finding housing, and given the large growth, it will become even harder for everyone to find a room.

The council yesterday discussed the proposal by the PvdA and De Nijmeegse Fractie (DNF) to put a temporary stop to the squatting of premises in order to get order with enforcement. While enforcement is indeed lacking and this unfortunately causes liveability to be below standard in some neighbourhoods, however, this motion would push combing even more into illegality and further increase the shortage of decent student housing.

A proposal to call on SSH& to start building more units for students was also passed. While we are of course very happy about this, unfortunately these are not yet concrete plans to build student houses. Moreover, we still do not see a clear policy on spreading private student housing throughout Nijmegen. This would improve liveability. We therefore hope that the board will soon come up with clear plans.

In short, we made a good start yesterday to address the growing room shortage and additional problems with liveability in neighbourhoods, but much remains to be done. We call on council and college to address this.

Piece in the Gelderlander: https://www.gelderlander.nl/nijmegen/janno-hoeft-niet-de-straat-op-tijdelijke-stop-op-verkamering-van-de-baan~a09ba4d6/