“The sooner you are informed, the sooner you can act and the more impact you can have.”
Meet Midas Bosman from Kences
Kences is committed to student housing and represents the interests of social student housing providers. In this blog, Midas Bosman, policy advisor at Kences, offers a glimpse into his work and explains how Polpo supports him along the way.
Kences and the value of political monitoring
Kences is the Dutch knowledge center for student housing and the industry association for social student housing providers. Every year, we publish the National Student Housing Monitor. It is packed with useful data, not just for housing providers but also for municipalities and the national government. This information helps shape policy decisions around how we handle student housing in the Netherlands. We also collect a lot of input from our members on ongoing developments.
As an industry association, we talk with politicians, civil servants and other stakeholders at the national level about what’s needed to move forward with student housing. The goal is to solve the housing shortage together and create policies that are both realistic and workable.
The role of political monitoring in advocacy
We want to help our members grow in quality while keeping student housing affordable. That means we focus on issues like service charges, which were recently the subject of a new bill in Parliament. Questions include how those charges should be structured, which costs need to be made transparent for students and municipalities, and how to make sure our members can work within legal boundaries.
There are other important topics too, like the housing valuation system, whether tenants are paying fair rent, and how that rent is determined. Given the major shortage in student housing, it is crucial that social housing providers can keep building. But that only works if the rents are high enough to make it possible, while remaining affordable for students. A lot of work has gone into designing a system that supports that balance.
How Polpo supports the process
The automatic email alerts are the feature I use most. For urgent topics, you get a notification the moment something is published, so you can act right away. You can also set up daily or weekly updates that give you a clear overview of what was said in parliamentary debates, or which motions were submitted. It is all in one place and easy to go through.
I have recently started using the agenda function as well. Somehow, Polpo already shows what’s coming up before it’s officially confirmed, which saves a lot of time. It lets you plan ahead for a few weeks and makes the work much more efficient.
Looking ahead
Kences is one of the partners behind the National Action Plan for Student Housing. Together with the ministries of Housing and Education, municipalities, the G6, the national student union, the national student renters’ council and commercial parties, we’ve agreed on plans for new housing, availability and affordability. The shared goal is to create 60,000 new student homes by 2030.
What matters most is that student housing providers and housing associations are actually able to achieve these goals. And that starts with information. Because the sooner you’re informed, the sooner you can act and the more impact you can have.