Why 10 People Rejected A Terrible Apartment (And I Accepted It)
From dark-purple ceilings to a floor with toothmarks, and everything in between.
Ceilings, walls, heaters, and window sills. Nothing was spared from the black lack, the dark-purple paint, black-with-golden-geometric-shapes-wallpaper, and zebra print.
It wasn’t painted neatly, either. Here and there, a random splash of paint on the white doors, on windows, or in the kitchen.
The apartment was missing doorsteps between rooms which revealed the concrete under the floor (…?) and parts of the floor were chewed on (you read that right).
I said ‘yes’ to that place.
What happened?
I was on a waiting list for a house for 7 years in November of 2019. To put things into perspective: that’s not long. Where my sister lives, people wait 10+ years before they receive an invitation to view their potential new home.
At that time I lived at my parent’s place for 1,5 years after I got back from traveling. I love them loads but was ready to find my own place.
Me being in need of a home is not the reason why I was happy with the rundown apartment.
In that November, I received an invitation for a viewing.
Because I wasn’t in the Netherlands and had to attend this visit to be eligible, my mom went on my behalf. Thank you, Mom! We video called, she showed me around and sent pictures.
It was definitely not a beauty, as the introduction suggests.
To be precise, the ceilings and most of the walls in the bedroom and living room were dark-purple. The two other walls in the bedroom had full-on zebra print. The massive heater was painted black, plus the 2+ meter wide windowsill and window frame above it. In an uneven way, using lack where it should be painted or the other way around. While doing so, surrounding walls also got a freestyle brush.
If you look out of the window and stick your head out, you still see black paintbrushes on the outside of the window frame. Why?!
It only gets better as many questions arose while moving into this place.
One specific piece of decoration grabbed our attention. I’ll do my best to explain it in words.
It was a 0.5 x 0.8 meters piece of wooden laminate, framed with another kind of wood. Glued on the wall. In the living room. Close to the floor.
That’s right. Framed laminate. On the wall.
We thought that... maybe there's a hole in the wall behind it? Did they try to cover it up? Or some other damage? Or a leakage?
I texted the previous resident to ask what it was for. She said they did it just because they liked it. It had zero purposes.
We tried to remove it as well as we could, including the generous amount of glue on the wall.
The former residents were creative and made the apartment exactly how they wanted it, I have to give them that!
Besides that, plinths were hammered in the floor with nails. The plinths that were not nailed down, were chewed on.
Always was I curious about what the former resident was like?
She helped us answer the Plinths Question: she had a dog, and that explained the chewing.
So… Why on Earth did I accept this apartment?!
How terrible is it, really?
I was on the 11th spot on the waiting list for this particular apartment. The fact that I got invited to view it meant that 10 people said ‘no’.
And I understand fully why they didn’t accept it. With those decorations, it felt like a dark cave. A rundown dark cave.
Though… looking through that outer layer is an apartment that has everything I could wish for.
That one-bedroom apartment has a 19 square meters balcony, trees on both sides, is close enough to the center of the city, has a park within walking distance, a great supermarket 5 minutes by foot, and a train station around the corner.
The balcony has sun all day long. On one side of the apartment is a view of the sunrise and on the other side is a view of the sunset.
If I’m up for a short walk, I do a tour around the small park at the end of the street. If I’m up for a bigger walk, I walk 20 minutes to get to a beautiful park where I easily spend a few hours.
From the apartment, I can walk to university, train stations, and am easily reachable for friends.
The rent is only € 320 a month.
Buckets of paint
You’re right; it cost a ton of buckets of paint to make the geometric shapes invisible, the purple out, and the radiator white.
But oh man, it’s so worth it!
I feel at home here.
Nowadays, people walk in, saying it’s a lovely place (I think they’re honest :)) and are amazed by how ‘lucky’ I was.
The truth is that I wasn’t lucky. I was as lucky as the other 10 people who went to the viewing. (Though I was very lucky that my mom got the chance to go to the viewing — thanks to her, I live here now.)
Of course, it did help I was in need of a place. But I didn’t take this apartment because I was desperate; this apartment ticked all the boxes of a place I was hoping for! It was just hidden behind a millimeter of zebra print.
Not all housing market systems in the Netherlands work like this. Naturally, most of the time the former residents need to restore a house in its original state.
How I got here — Social housing and waiting lists in the Netherlands
I know, housing is a common problem in a lot of places in the world. It’s expensive, doesn’t meet needs, and often is impossible to find in the first place.
In the Netherlands, the most recent estimation is that 12.8000 youngsters are homeless and hopping couches purely due to the tight housing market. Young, a future ahead of you, perhaps studying, and not having a place to live.
Houses or apartments that used to be ‘poor worker's homes’ in Amsterdam, are now rented out for € 1000 a month or being demolished and new houses come in their place. Where do the former residents go who can’t pay the new rent?
A part of the solution
To avoid this maze, you can register at housing corporations or online registration websites for social housing. It depends on the area of your interest where to register.
Social housing is relatively well organized. It means that if you have a certain income, you’re welcome to be on a waiting list for houses when they become available.
The houses that fall under social housing, can only cost a maximum of €763,47 a month. On top of that, you can request a subsidy to reduce costs even further if your salary allows you to. The lower the income, the higher the subsidy.
This perhaps sounds too good to be true, but the truth is that those waiting lists can be 5, 10, or 15 years before you’re invited to view a home.
If you have a few years on your name, a house is old, or on the small side, or has always had low rent (they can’t increase the rent with whatever they want), you may end up in an affordable and lovely home.
Not only old houses and long waiting lists can give you a social housing place.
Many new flats are popping up. They’re like sprouts in spring. Contractors who build those, agree with municipalities that a minimum percentage of the whole building has to be social housing. In other words, the rent can’t be higher than €763,47. Believe it or not, this apartment building has 150 social housing homes for which people were able to apply.
Final thoughts
I, too, realized only much later in life that’s why all parents try to motivate their kiddos to register at housing corporations as soon as they’re 18. By the time those children are ready for their own place, those years on a waiting list help. Loads. If you’re on a waiting list for a long time, you can basically cherry-pick your favorite place :)
Even though mine wasn’t the cream of the crop, I’m grateful to live here with my yellow wall. Maybe by the time I move out, the next resident is going to be like.. why the F did this person paint her wall yellow?!?!
Source of inspiration. The other day, KL Simmons and I got to chat in the comment section of one of her articles:
I mentioned the state I found my current apartment in and she was so surprised I accepted it — that makes complete sense — that I felt the urge to explain the situation a bit further. So it happened this story came to be. Thanks for creating this indirect writing prompt, KL!! 👏🏼
Two more stories for you:
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