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FOTO: Stéphane Lelarge
International students without housing
Due to overbooking done by Student Housing, 219 international students had no place to live last week, even though their deposits were paid and their contracts were signed.
På norsk- This year, to provide residences to as many students as we could, we overbooked. Tom Olstad, director of Student Housing.
- The situation was chaotic on Monday, admits Tom Olstad, director of Student Housing.
International students started to arrive in Oslo last week. When showing up at the housing division by The Foundation for Student Life in Oslo, SiO, most of the students were told that there was no room left for them in the housing units at Sogn and Kringsjå, this in spite of the fact that the formalities like deposits and contracts were already organized. According to SiO’s residence guarantee, international students are entitled to a place to live.
- The information provided was really not sufficient. When I showed up at the office wanting to know when I could move in at Sogn, the answer I got was that it might take a week or it might take a month, says Pauline Darvey, a French exchange student from the ERASMUS program.
Overbooked residences
According to Olstad, a minority of the international students were affected by the lack of housing, in total 219.
- Experience from previous years shows that many students who have signed their contracts fail to show up at the start of the semester. This year, to provide residences to as many students as we could, we overbooked. Then it turned out that most of the students did turn up, and that is when things got complicated, says Olstad.
According to the Norwegian Tenency Act, international students are entitled to compensation for the delayed delivery of the housing arrangement. The French student was offered a room at Vestgrensa Student Village, but this room was unfurnished and cost 1 000 Norwegian kroner more than the room she originally had signed a contract for.
- It is not fair to be treated this way. Especially since we aren’t Norwegian and we don’t know what our rights are, claims the French student, who is now finally accommodated at Sogn, after contacting Student Housing by both phone and email.
Temporary solutions
Darvey was lucky; she had a friend who had exchanged to Oslo earlier. She got in touch with Vilde Aas Jakobsen, with whom she stayed with until she got her own room, and who helped her contact SiO.
- I asked if it was possible to check the students into hotels, but the answer I got was that all the hotels in Oslo were full. Practically this means that SiO has put these students out on the street, says Vilde Aas Jakobsen.
Olstad says that some of the students the first nights had to sleep in temporary common rooms at Sogn Student Village. SiO has an agreement with the Rica hotels that students can stay there if anything should happen, but there was no vacancy before Wednesday last week.
- If students involuntary live in a place or in a hotel that is more expensive than the accommodation they have signed a contract for, Student Housing will cover the difference. We are working to capacity to solve this, and I can guarantee that the students will get the rooms and apartments they are entitled to by September 1st, says Olstad, and he assures that none of the tenants will be suffering economically.
He also states that none of the students are staying in common rooms at the present moment: 32 are staying in contracted rooms, 64 are staying in hotels and 123 are staying in another place than they signed a contract for.
