Municipality wants to force student housing provider HiCondo to lower rents (English in post body)
A few notes about this story:
- Despite what the article implies, the order only applies to HiCondo tenants that had a puntatelling performed by the Gemeente, NOT all tenants.
- The article does not mention that there is a current dispute regarding falsified Energielabels, which are keeping rents artificially high.
- Something that keeps happening with the media and now the Gemeente itself: they keep wrongfully crediting Stichting !Woon, who had barely any involvement in the Gemeente investigations. The tenants themselves did the majority of the work; even the day that this article was published, the Gemeente emailed the bewonerscommissie asking them to help contact the tenants whose rents are to be lowered, **because the Gemeente apparently didn't keep track of their contact information.** We anticipate there'll be a news story in another outlet later this year that will help correct the record, because naturally, I have al the receipts.
Now the article:
Municipality wants to force student housing provider HiCondo to lower rents
Student housing provider HiCondo in Southeast Amsterdam is charging structurally excessive rents for 350 student studios. The municipality intends to force the manager to lower the rents through an enforcement process.
The monthly rental prices are tens to hundreds of euros higher than permitted under the points system of the Affordable Rent Act. This is evident from 'intensive investigation' by the municipality and the !Woon foundation, the municipality writes in a letter. The name of the property manager is not mentioned, but the !Woon foundation confirms that it concerns HiCondo.
Very high security deposits
Last March, HiCondo was also fined 45,000 euros . This was because the property manager charged excessive security deposits and service fees for services that the tenants did not receive at all. Those fines fell under a different law: the Good Landlordship Act.
Het Parool already wrote about the problems at property manager HiCondo last October . Tenants spoke of security deposits running up to nearly 3,000 euros for studios with rents between 800 and 870 euros. On top of that came annual service charges of 2,300 to 2,900 euros. HiCondo’s tenants are mostly young and international students. A British student said at the time: “I thought it was a lot of money, but I was in need. My studies were about to start and I still didn’t have a home.”
Complaint against manager
Responsible Alderman Zita Pels (Housing) said at the time that tenants needed to be patient despite the many reports they filed with the municipal hotline. “Even when we have all the evidence, it could still take a while,” she said then. Meanwhile, the case file the municipality is building appears solid enough to take action.
At the end of April, Stichting !Woon filed a complaint against the manager of HiCondo, Soner Sari, for forgery. The tenants' advocacy group in Amsterdam accuses Sari of falsifying invoices to substantiate the service charges. Sari allegedly submitted these invoices as evidence in cases before the Rent Commission and the sub-district court. It is not yet clear whether the complaint will be pursued by the Public Prosecution Service. Sari was unavailable for comment.