For nine months, residents have been waiting for the Hague Van Montfoortlaan for a message from the landlord Vesteda, who wants to make their apartment complex more sustainable. But the letter that falls on the mat on January 31, 2024 is not at all about previously announced adjustments, such as replacing the frames. Instead, all tenants receive an eviction request.
The fact that the residents of all 36 homes have to leave their homes empty for two or three weeks, so that Vesteda can work on fire safety, comes from nowhere for them. Just like suspending the promised sustainability, about which the tenants had received a slick presentation nine months earlier.
The Consultation Act, which regulates the landlords of large complexes should handle their tenants, prescribes that Vesteda will discuss this type of major adjustments with residents in time and carefully, but that leaves the most wealthy landlord of free sector homes in the Netherlands more often, according to research by research NRC. Vesteda has a total of 28,000 rental properties, especially in the more expensive segment.
The Hague tenant Alexander Rose (79 years old), active in the interest group of the complex, did not know what he read. “We were offered a meager removal allowance and we had to find out for ourselves where we would find a home that few weeks. And the rent would just go through.”
Where the almost suddenly came from? Rose has a suspicion. Half a year before the letter from Vesteda, a major fire raged at a new complex of this landlord in Amsterdam East. There were no injuries, but fire safety was suddenly at the top of all priority lists at Vesteda.
The residents of the Hague complex, says Rose, were not waiting at all to improve fire safety. In their eyes that was not necessary at all. “We thought: just look at it, we are left.”
Vesteda did not pick this up and made a brief proceeding against her own tenants. In vain. According to the subdistrict court judge, Vesteda – partly in view of the ‘enormous discomfort’ of a temporary eviction – had ‘insufficiently substantiated that there was urgent work in the homes’. The tenants did not have to vacate their house.
Unnecessary formalistic
Strive communication and legal disputes between Vesteda and his tenants are not limited to the complex in The Hague. NRC spoke with residents and members of residents’ committees and tenants’ associations of six Vesteda complexes, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, among others, and saw correspondence between the tenants’ organizations and the real estate company.
This shows that Vesteda regularly arranges unnecessarily formalistic by demanding very detailed information from tenant organizations or by throwing up legal thresholds if tenants want to agree. In large complexes, the Consultation Act aims to give rights and participation in the policy of their landlord in large complexes.
What also does not help: the National Vesteda Platform, which had to improve the cooperation between the more than one hundred representatives of tenants in large Vesteda complexes, appears to be demolished without much publicity after the landlord had withdrawn.
The reason for NRC to investigate the relationship between Vesteda and its tenants’ organizations is a lawsuit that serves this Monday. It contains the landlord opposite HBV Detroit, the tenants’ interest association of the building of the same name with 79 luxury rental properties on the Veemkade in Amsterdam. NRC already wrote about the problems in this building in 2019, ‘Parel in the crown of the Vesteda portfolio’.
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Service costs
Six years later, the moods between the tenants in ‘Detroit’ and their landlord are still not calm. On Monday, the HBV demands a reimbursement of around 40,000 euros on the basis of the Consultation Act for the costs that it had to incur in recent years after Vesteda had taken the HBV to court. This happened because the tenants’ organization, which the website and administration has in perfect order, would not meet formal requirements. Later Vesteda, which lost the procedure on this at the Court, again blamed for the lack of legitimacy of the HBV.
Vesteda raises legal thresholds when tenants try to unite
Vesteda is always looking for new ways to bother the tenant representation in Detroit, says HBV chairman Pieter Herman. “We were about to go to court a few years ago because we thought we were paying too much service costs. Added to the entire building, in a few years, it will be more than a ton.”
After a publication about this in NRC in 2019, Vesteda getting well soon. Herman: “We had not yet withdrawn our summons, or we were dragged to court ourselves. All our energy has sat down in fighting our rights. After all these years we have still not arrived at the discussion about the too much paid service costs.”
Power game
Tenants’ association Het Bastion in Velserbroek (seventy homes) is also involved in a legal conflict with Vesteda. Chairman Fred Lindeman (78), former director of various pension funds and companies in the aviation sector: “Vesteda refuses any contact. They demand minutes, claim that we do not work according to our statutes and refuse the small cost reimbursement to which we as a tenants’ association are entitled. It is nothing to do with consultation-it is pure intimidation.”
Residents of other complexes are milder over Vesteda. Their conclusion: the more informal the consultation with the landlord, the smoother that goes. That says, for example, French people, member of the informal sounding board group of the recently refurbished Vesteda complex IJzicht (around 150 rental homes) in the Amsterdam IJburg district.
“Our building is from 2009, but due to construction errors there were cracks in the facades and there was constant leaks,” says people. “Last year, the entire building for home was refurbished. You can imagine what nuisance that caused – the noise, the scaffolding. We united as tenants, but emphatically without formal status. In that case we would have more rights, but we were afraid of all the extra bureaucracy. Vesteda also thought that was a pleasant approach.”
People say: “After a rough start, we had a monthly consultation with Vesteda. All tenants in our building received a small rental discount for two months, the change of information went smoothly. And when the renovation was ready, there was a party. Some residents found that Vesteda did too little, but for me it was well enough. it syrupy. ”
Major renovations
The Woonbond, which stands up for the interests of tenants, has more examples of commercial landlords that keep tenants interests small. “Landlords have no interest in which tenants unite,” says Mathijs ten Broeke of the Woonbond. “Why would you support a tenants’ organization that can only make it difficult for you? And moreover: a tenant interest association that is not there, you don’t have to provide information.”
Last century was tenant participation simpler. Anyone who then rented a home at a housing association, was automatically a member of it – and were automatically consulted in the event of major renovations or adjustments to the rental policy. This changed when housing associations were transformed into housing associations in the 1990s.
In order to create a form of consultation where tenants have a voice, the Tenants’ Landlord Consultation Act (WOHV or for short consultation law) came into force in 1998. All complexes that are larger than 25 rental homes are included – from both housing associations and commercial landlords. Landlords must provide information to tenants’ organizations according to the set times, especially if there are major adjustments to the property or change rental conditions.
Landlords have no interest in anyone that tenants agree
In practice, it makes a big difference whether someone hires a corporation or from a commercial party. After the parliamentary survey to the housing associations in 2014, tenants’ organizations received much more participation at corporations – for example, they can only merge after a positive opinion from the tenants committee.
In the commercial sector it appears to be much more difficult for tenants. What plays a role: the tenants’ organizations consist of volunteers – often pensioners – with much less time and resources than the professional real estate parties with whom they should consult. “The conversation is often the case, but as it gets more serious and tenants’ associations organize themselves better, you see that landlords in the commercial sector are starting to find it less pleasant,” says Ten Broeke van de Woonbond.
There is also regular hassle about money. The consultation law prescribes that the lessor in principle must pay the costs that tenants’ organizations must pay, for example if they hire ‘external experts’ for advice.
Dispute
Until last year, Vesteda had a partnership from tenants organizations, the Vesteda Platform. That platform no longer exists since November last year, a Vesteda spokesperson confirms. One of the reasons: Vesteda no longer wanted to collaborate with the platform, partly due to disputes in the platform board.
Various tenants’ organizations tell NRC that they miss a central source of information about their rights and obligations compared to Vesteda – one of the functions of the platform – enormously. The organizations now have the feeling that they are only opposed to Vesteda. The spokesperson sees that differently. He e -mails that the platform “himself lifted itself during a member meeting,” where “a large majority of the affiliated tenant organizations had hardly any objections.”
The half -yearly consultation between Vesteda and the tenant organizations is simply continued per residential complex, the spokesperson continues. And that is “generally smooth.” He does confirm that with ‘a few tenants’ associations and residents ‘committees’ – precisely that NRC spoke – there is a difference of opinion about matters such as fire safety, legal requirements and financial agreements.
Vesteda knows that it has to conduct accessible and accessible consultations with tenants, but sometimes “because of legislation” cannot help but choose an “extremely formal attitude, according to the spokesperson.” We are a financial institution, are under supervision and must be able to substantiate our income and expenditure if desired. “
All in all, Vesteda is not entirely happy with the state of affairs. During consultation “We notice that the legal rights and obligations of a tenants’ organization are sometimes unknown or unknown or explained differently,” he writes. Then a difference of insight can arise “about the nature and quantity requested” that “must or should not be provided.” The spokesperson: “As a result, the parties soon face each other” and “a corridor to the rental committee or the judge” can be inescapable. His proposal: “The further clarification of the content of this law could possibly prevent conflicts about its content.”
Dishwasher
In the residential complex on the Van Montfoortlaan in The Hague, peace has returned after the court case that the tenants won. Alexander Rose, who still performs on behalf of the tenants, has picked up the thread with his landlord as well and as bad as it goes. “They are easy to reach for small things. If my dishwasher is broken, I can just report it and a technician will come by,” he says. The lack of clarity about Vesteda’s plans with the apartment complex, where nine of the 36 apartments are now vacant, has since remained.
If NRC inquires, after months of silence suddenly gets into the case. “This afternoon we received a letter from Vesteda in which there is more clarity about the plans,” Rose emails shortly before the publication of this article. He suddenly no longer wants contact with the newspaper. “We are invited to think about further plans.” Contributing to an article “would seriously harm the brittle relationship, which now turns for something for the better.”