Karin (28) has been living illegally on a campsite for years because she cannot find an affordable house anywhere. Her income is too high for a social rented house, but too low to pay rent in the private sector. And she has no chance of buying a house at all. “I’ve tried it forty times. I am completely discouraged. My life is standing still.”
Karin tells her story at a campsite somewhere in Brabant. Karin is not her real name and we are not allowed to tell exactly where she lives.
Until she was 24, Karin still lived at home. “That didn’t work anymore,” she says. “I wanted to get out of the house. I had been looking for something for two years then. I could either rent privately, but I can’t afford it. Or I had to go to the campsite. That’s affordable. But you run the risk of ending up on the street at any moment.”
“I’ve been living here illegally for a few years now,” says Karin. She is sitting in the garden by her mobile home at the campsite. “I always hope I’m not there when there’s a check. Otherwise you will be kicked out. Then I have nothing left.”
“It makes you so discouraged.”
You can tell from everything that the tight housing market is high. “I just can’t intervene.” She has been looking for a home of her own for about five years now. “Just when it turned from the good times to the bad times, I started looking.”
She could just pay for a house of up to 250,000 euros with her savings and how much mortgage she can get with her job as a reach truck driver. “If a house comes along for that amount, I also have to offer another 40,000 euros. I just don’t have that money.”
Over the past few years, she has already bid on about 40 homes. “And I still have nothing. It’s so frustrating. You then call a broker to see if you have a chance. But you don’t stand a chance. Another has a higher bid or a trader can pay it without financing. Still, you should try it. Otherwise it will never work. But it makes you so despondent.”
“I’ve been registered for over nine years.”
And so she’s been living at the campground for a few years now while continuing to look for a home. She is now trying to get a social rental home that comes up for sale. But that is also almost impossible to do. The advantage of such a house is that the price is fixed and that you do not have to outbid. But someone who already lives in a rented house and wants to buy it, gets priority. Then the landlord looks at who has the longest registration time.
“I have been registered for more than nine years,” says Karin. “Even that is not enough to get a house. I recently responded to a house in Uden. I didn’t even have to come and see.”
She has the feeling that her life has come to a standstill. “I now put all my money in a savings account. But with every hundred euros you save now, house prices will go up by 1000 euros, so to speak,” says Karin. “I really want a house, tree, animal. But for that you have to have a house.”
Are you also stuck in the housing market and do you want to share your story with us? Are you unable to find something or are you no longer able to pay your housing costs? Then send an email to [email protected].