The municipality of Groningen wants to crack down on rogue room landlords with high fines and a digital pillory. It is the only way to combat malpractice in rentals, says councilor Rik Niejenhuis (PvdA).
Niejenhuis (Wonen) knows the stories about landlords who are capable of doing anything to earn as much money as possible. Yet it scares him every time, he says. The same goes for the stories UKrant two weeks ago, in which students talk about how their landlords bully them out of their home.
Several landlords bring vagrants and unsavory types into a student house to deliberately cause a nuisance. A landlord urinated in several places in the house. Another smashed students’ furniture while they were on vacation. He later said that he had assumed that they no longer lived there, even though they had not even terminated the lease.
Lucrative apartments
The landlords’ goal is to get the students out of the house as quickly as possible and convert the student rooms into more lucrative apartments. “It’s scandalous and we have to tackle this tough,” says Niejenhuis. ‘These people must understand that it is not possible. And if there are no consequences, they just carry on.’
The new Good Landlordship Act gives the municipality many tools to act, says the councilor. ‘If a landlord does not comply with the rules, for example intimidates, discriminates or charges too high rent or service charges, we can now very quickly impose an administrative fine.’ And does a landlord make repeated mistakes? Then the fine becomes higher.
Repetition
But, as the Woonbond previously stated UKrantWith these rules you do not tackle the landlord personally, but the situation in a specific building. So how does the municipality ensure that a rogue landlord does not repeat the same situation in ten other properties?
“If we see that someone is not a private landlord, but a commercial landlord with many properties, we can issue other fines,” says Niejenhuis.
For example, according to the councilor, a commercial landlord could receive a fine of 20,000 euros for a first mistake, which would increase to 40,000 euros for the next mistake. ‘This way you arrive at amounts that these landlords also consider a lot of money.’
Notifications important
If a landlord is imposed a fine or other sanction, the municipality will publish this publicly from July: a ‘digital pillory’ where everyone can see which landlords have already made a mistake.
To really make the approach possible, reports from tenants are very important, says Niejenhuis.
‘Students can contact the Rent Support Center, physically, by telephone or digitally. A report can also be made anonymously. The more reports, the more we can do. We need to be able to create a pattern with these types of bad landlords. The broader the file, the easier we can impose fines or take other steps.’
photos
The councilor understands that students find it exciting to make such a report. Still, he hopes they do, even if it is after the fact. ‘And that, where possible, they have photos of poor maintenance or too high rents, for example. They can be just the supporting explanations needed to tackle someone.’
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