On April 16, at the invitation of Vestide, prospective residents were able to take a look inside Aurora, where a few homes were already furnished. The visit generated plenty to talk about within the Facebook group for spacebox residents (almost 100 members). The future monthly rent was one hot topic: in some cases, depending on the type of housing and entitlement to housing benefit, an increase of 200 euros is on the cards.

“In themselves, the building and the homes look good - comfortably and practically furnished, absolutely better than the space boxes. Of course we expected the rent to increase a little," says Xianzheng Kong, PhD candidate at Human-Technology Interaction. "But by 200 euros - wow, really?”

The shared refrigerators for four people in the ‘group homes’ are also giving rise to doubt, as is the total number of washing machines and dryers available - five of each - in the new building. Moreover, residents will be required to pay a fee for their use. The current laundry room at the spaceboxes, says Kong, has ten washing machines and ten dryers (free of charge) for 186 people, while Aurora will soon be housing more than 300 residents. “How do they think that's going to work?”

Like many other spacebox residents, says Kong , his strongest feeling is one of disappointment. "Vestide seems mainly concerned with the name of the building and the color of the floors, not about what we really need.” Not that the researcher has tried to contact the accommodation provider; Kong felt compelled to play it safe and recently moved into a new home off campus, on the Boschdijk.

The critical voices coming from the spaceboxes are not unfamiliar to Harald Evers, Vestide's district manager. He says he can well understand, among other things, the reaction to the rise in rent. “All of us would prefer to pay as little as possible for as high a quality as possible." But, as he says, the residents will soon enjoy considerably improved living conditions in many respects, including “greater domestic comfort, more square meters, a larger kitchen, better bathroom fixtures and a common room.”

Points system

Evers refers to the accommodation rating system, a points system used to calculate the rent. "We are well under the 100 percent rental price, as we are for our entire housing stock.” In his view, Vestide is interested primarily in providing affordable housing, not on maximizing profit, he assures us. “The rents are truly reasonable.”

For the time being, Evers does not share residents' concerns that there are not enough washing machines and dryers. He believes Vestide has looked closely at the facilities in residential complexes of a similar size elsewhere in the country, “and this has revealed that those machines are very often not in use.”

"But," as the district manager says, "you only know the real situation once the building is actually occupied. Take the common room, for example. That has not yet been fully furnished because we like to let residents tell us what they need once they have moved in. If it turns out that certain things aren't going smoothly, and there is scope for improvement, we'll take a look at the situation together. Perhaps, for example, a large refrigerator will prove necessary or an extra freezer or even separate refrigerators for each person - but changes like that come at a cost.”

As for the one-year rental agreements so feared by residents, Evers is clear: they have been scrapped for everyone except exchange students. “That was actually something TU/e wanted, to ensure that housing would definitely become available for new influx after a year.”

But Vestide thought the construction would be difficult to introduce from a legal perspective and undesirable. “It's understandable that students and researchers prefer to live in one place for the duration of their study or project.”

Evers wonders aloud, “Do you suppose the majority of the space-box residents have criticisms, or a minority that we need to pay close attention to? Our impression is the latter - but that doesn't mean to say that we aren't taking those voices seriously.”

Residents are expected to move into Aurora on August 1st. Next week those who are interested can let Vestide know which units they would prefer to rent.