The market for student accommodation in Wageningen is getting increasingly difficult. The number of students looking for a room is set to grow by more than two thousand in the next few years. Additional measures are needed to tackle the shortages on top of the existing plans for rooms on campus (400), Dolderstraat/Nobelweg (148), Lawickse Hof (150) and the administration centre in Duivendaal (179).
Temporary units
That is why the municipality, Idealis and the university have agreed in a joint memorandum to look for sites and vacant offices that can be used to develop permanent student accommodation in short order. The municipality is also prepared in principle to extend the temporary lease on the Haarweg by five years. The first permits for the temporary units are due to expire in 2014. Idealis will also be investigating what maintenance measures are needed to keep the student accommodation on the Walstraat operational for longer. This means postponement of the plan to replace these rooms with a new building, a scenario that would result in even bigger shortages in the short run. In the meantime, students are also taking action to deal with the lack of rooms. A group of Wageningen students have built a website that lets students sublet their accommodation for a fixed period. At http://rentstudentroom.nl , students from various university towns offer their room for rent while they are away on an internship. One of the initiators, Liu Jian, says the site gets two thousand visitors a day.