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So, this is gonna be some story, TL;DR at the bottom.
Since 4 years, I live in a building which has difficulties with heating and hot water. Over the years, all tenants have complained with the housing association, which is the largest housing association for students in the Netherlands. After 3 years of troubles, they announced that they were replacing the installation for heating and hot water because they were not able to fix the problems.
They started activities in May, and the housing association decided that they would not rent out appartments if they became available due to the nuisance. And a nuisance it was. In almost every appartment they worked in, something went wrong. In my appartment they hit the gas line and it took 1,5 week to fix it. I received a compensation (something along the lines of 250 euros) for the troubles. The state of the appartment afterwards is quite... well, absurd. There are heating pipes everywhere, wholes in the walls, floors and ceilings which have been filled up quickly but are very noticable. The holes in the floors from the old pipes are still there. So are all the dirty spots (think brown stains on white walls that won't come off).
Fast forward to august: I became concierge for the whole building (normally, fixing the lights outside and giving people spare keys when they locked themselves out). Fortunately for me, I got access to most of the information about the project and direct lines to the people working on the project. Since they started connecting people to the new installation (from September on) there have been difficulties with hot water, mostly about the stability. Low water pressure, no hot water at all or troubles with temperatures. I spoke with the lead mechanic about this during september to guarantee quick solutions. Calling the housing association would usually end up with: "We have no number that we can call, so just go talk to the mechanics that are already there". I made sure I have documentation from this, and I e-mailed this to the housing association as well. During september, problems arose and were solved constantly. The lead mechanic assured me this would be over after they were finished.
October 1st was the day everything was supposed to work, from heating to hot water. Only, hot water goes from hot to cold back to bloody hot when you want to take a shower. Hot water itself works fine - just bleding it with cold water for a shower leads to enormous issues with stability. I called the housing association contact person for this project and complained. They asked me to ask around who else had these problems. Almost everyone as it turned out. They have tried to solve it, but nothing has worked. So here we are: not being able to take a normal shower, in appartments where walls are slightly crumbling due to the damage. Next to this, there is a lot of other maintenance that has not been performed which is causing trouble. Speaking for only myself: my toilet starting leaking water (mechanics from the heating installation fixed that, because the housing association told me they could fix it in a few days and it was leaking water every time I went to the toilet), and the drain from my shower broke, causing the bathroom to smell like a sewer. And that is just my appartment.
No other compensation has been given or offered.
I thought I might talk to the Huurcommissie (an organisation dealing with these kind of problems that can force the housing association to lower rents while this problem lasts), but apparently you have to have written proof that you asked them to solve these problems. I only made phone calls. Is there any way around this? Can I do sómething to force the housing association to fix this ASAP?
TL;DR: It's been fucking 5-9 weeks since I had a decent and care-free shower. My housing association tries to fix it, but fails constantly. There is no compensation and I can't start a formal complaint with the Huurcommissie. What can I do?
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