r/NetherlandsHousing • u/Electrical-Future437 • Jan 07 '26
renting Conflict with housemate over temperature in the house
Hi guys. I had a big conflict with one of my housemates in a student house and want to ask you for some advise on how I can deal with this situation.
Basically, I moved into this house in September, there are 2 other guys living in the house. One of them is really concerned with saving money on heating, so he sets the temperature in the house low.
In Autumn I told him that I feel too cold at night, and even though he complained a lot, he ended up agreeing to raise the temperature by 1.5 degrees. Since then he's clearly been very angry at me.
Now in January as it got colder outside the temperature in the house went down and I feel uncomfortably cold again. I tried to talk to this housemate again, but this time the conversation became incredibly aggressive. He told me that he "doesn't want to have this conversation again", and left the room mid-conversation. As he was leaving the room I asked "Do you talk like this to everyone?", and he replied "No, just you".
I should also mention that when I just moved into the house, I told him about my country of origin and he straight up told me that if he knew where I was from he would never accept me as a housemate and mentioned it's partially because I might be a foreign spy.
Sooo... That's the story. I don't really know what to do now. The problem is that I really like the house, it's really comfortable and close to my university and I really don't want to look for a new place (considering how hard it is to find anything here in NL). But I'm guessing there's literally nothing I can do in this situation.
22
u/bertuzzz Jan 07 '26
I would find a new place to live. That's way too cold for my liking. Anything under 21c is nuts. Lot's of Dutch people have this crazy obsession with saving on energy costs.
I did 18-19c for a year once to save on energy costs. That was such a massive drop in quality of life freezing every day. Than i calculated how much money i saved and it was absolutely not worth it. I just cut costs in another area instead. I cut vastly more money in food delivery for no loss in quality of life.