“We Can’t Live on Waiting Lists!”

DAG supports the students at the Heykenspand, Groningen.

The student movement Democratische Academie Groningen (DAG) has been warning both municipality and University of the urgent housing shortage that has gotten more severe by a continuous growth in student population. Their failure to act properly are essentially the cause for students seeking alternative solutions.

Last year DAG mitigated the crisis by its couch-surfing initiative. This year we decided against repeating such an action, as it would imply that we take over the responsibility for homeless students. We believe that it’s both the municipality’s and the University’s responsibility.

The city is now not able to offer suitable amounts of affordable and qualitatively acceptable housing for students and socio-economically weakly positioned citizens, while being filled with many practically unused empty buildings. DAG therefore supports any efforts of students to find alternative forms of housing.