Noorderplantsoen action to make student houses more sustainable (press release)

DWARS Groningen today set up the music dome in the Noorderplantsoen as its own student room. The young people themselves wore thick jumpers, scarves and gloves: something some students are also forced to do in their student rooms due to rising energy bills. In this way, the youth branch of GroenLinks wanted to draw attention to the poor insulation of student houses and the fact that students pay for this themselves, while their landlord refuses to make them more sustainable. 

 “As a student, you are powerless. The landlord gets no incentive to make the house more sustainable, while they then come and recover the higher costs from you,” said Sophie Middelhuis, president of DWARS Groningen. “It's another stressor on top of everything students already have to deal with.” The municipality can do little to force sustainability on landlords, but this needs to change, the youth organisation believes.

DWARS Groningen therefore has the following requirements:

- Tackle tampering with energy labels, by appointing a task force from the municipality to monitor it.

- A campaign among students on what landlords can and cannot do.

- Make good insulation a requirement in the landlord licence.

- Rental ban on poorly insulated houses.

- Force housing associations to be energy neutral by 2035.

- More transparency on how the energy index is arrived at by landlords.

- Make double glazing the norm everywhere in Groningen.