Zoom Housing: A Student’s Reality Check
Written by Eli Celeste-Cohen, Spring 2024
It is difficult to fully express the dismal nature of Zoom housing which CEU foists upon its incoming undergraduates. Our situation is morally and practically wrong on so many levels that I’m not sure where to begin. And while my perspective is just mine, it is not unique. Every peer I talk to thinks Zoom Housing must go.
Okay. The rip-off price tag exploits foreign students who do not have resources to understand Vienna’s actual rental market. With Zoom I paid €500 each month for a shared room in an apartment with six people. We all shared one bathroom and we each had a half-shelf in a meter-sized fridge in a kitchen suitable for two people, not six. And this is in the fifth district, so it’s not the prime real estate of Vienna.
We’re getting scammed, and there’s an entire market of data which backs up what I’m saying. I now pay €600 per month on a three-month rental contract for a furnished studio ten minutes’ walk from CEU where an extra €100 gets me a flexible contract with my own room, kitchen, bathroom and balcony. Shared flats in nicer parts of Vienna nearly always cost less than €500 per person, and each tenant has a private room and lives with fewer people. I have peers who each pay €350 for a shared flat with individual rooms. For residence permit applications in 2023, Austria’s MA-35 calculates Vienna’s expected accommodation cost at €327.91 per month, the same figure used to calculate CEU’s PhD stipends. Vienna is known for having one of the most affordable rental markets in the world. Why does €500 with Zoom housing get so little?
There are other problems too. They fired the student residence assistants halfway through the year without reason and then offered to rehire them for half of their initial salary. But the RAs' initial salary was only unpaid accommodation, so their re-offer expected the RAs to begin paying €250 a month for their shared room. They demand that students switch dorms six months into their contract with only a week's notice, right in the midst of exam week. During their rushed reassignments they disregarded explicit statements made earlier in the year by students who had requested to be placed with roommates of the same gender. This was only done so Zoom could rent the vacated apartments — previously advertised as CEU’s student residence — to non-student tenants. They’re notorious for delaying the return of security deposits while overcharging and overexaggerating apartment damages. The problem is all these actions are within their contractual rights. How did CEU allow such draconian contract law to be imposed on their students? Who negotiated these contracts?
What to do. It’s clear to me that CEU should sever all ties with Zoom Housing. Not offering any options is better than encouraging its students to get taken advantage of by such a lamentable organization. But if the bureaucratic apparatus of CEU doesn’t have the energy to find a new partner, at least restructure the student contract’s exit clause to three months instead of six. Or better yet, let tenants leave at any time with a month’s notice, and just watch what happens. To CEU’s higher-ups: The relationship between students and administration does not need to be antagonistic. It is firmly in your interest to cultivate a positive relationship between students and the university. See the bigger picture in that CEU is a young university and its reputation relies on the reviews of its current student body. I implore you to reaffirm that CEU students deserve fair living arrangements. Or don’t. I recommend incoming students explore housing availability elsewhere.
