Housing Crisis Students in Enschede - Action is Needed!

While the University of Twente, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the city of Enschede are actively maintaining an image of being friendly to international students, we are not seeing sufficient actions that back this image. Finding a place to live in Enschede as a student has become (nearly) impossible. This is extremely stressful for international students in particular. They have no other choice but start their life in a new country without knowing whether they will have a roof over their head. Spending hours a day browsing for housing options online and getting rejected over and over again. Based on our observations, a single room offering can have up to 100 unique responses. International students are also more vulnerable to getting scammed, which happens frequently. 

ESN Twente considers the current climate to be extremely adversary towards international students. Students face a lot of stresses, the risks of being scammed and possible homelessness on a daily basis. At this point, we have exhausted all our rescources to help students in this housing crisis. We have hosted workshops on how to find housing, created a housing guide and are actively moderating chat groups on housing within our community. Our efforts alone are simply not enough to resolve the housing crisis. The University of Twente, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the municipality of Enschede are not taking this crisis seriously enough. They need to take their responsibility in creating sustainable housing options. 

ESN Twente will offer this petition to the executive boards of the University of Twente, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the municipality of Enschede. We believe that too little action is undertaken in order to create accessible and affordable housing options for students. We will offer this petition in written form to these parties in order to make them understand how urgent and serious the crisis is. We will demand a response from these parties that goes beyond empty words. 

What do we demand? 
On the short term:
- An overview of the efforts undertaken by these parties to accomodate students.
- An overview of future plans to create more housing.
- Provide temporary housing on campus for incoming students, regardless of origin.

On the long term:
- Inform housing partners of the issues regarding housing for internationals.
- Structural plans for new housing and more alignment with matching internationals with available housing. 

So, sign this petition if you think that this housing crisis is unacceptable, and urgent action is needed! 

On behalf of the internationals in Enschede,
The boards of Erasmus Student Network Twente (2020/2021/2022)