Students looking for accommodation: 2 euros for a 10-minute warm shower

When the student saw the coin-operated machine on the wall of her bathroom, the rental agreement had already been signed, says Benedikt Pfeiffer, social officer for the General Student Committee (AStA) at the University of Hamburg. The 22-year-old is sitting at a table in the AStA's information café, his laptop is open next to him.

A photo is open on the screen. The picture shows a bathroom with the coin machine attached to the wall. “Ready” and “1 x 2 euros” appear on its screen. The first-semester student contacted the student advice center the week before the start of the semester. According to her landlord's wishes, she should pay two euros every time she wants warm water to run out of her tap for 10 minutes.

Around 15,000 first-semester students start their studies in Hamburg every year in the winter semester. Hardly any other topic is as present in her work at the beginning of the semester as looking for an apartment, says Pfeiffer. The 22-year-old has been the contact person for the Social Affairs Department at the AStA together with Arja Sharma for three months. In the week before the start of the semester alone, around 50 students contacted the advice center with concerns about housing. The desperation of many is increasingly noticeable.

In his last few weeks, 19-year-old Julius has also experienced how mentally engaging the search for an apartment can be. The student from Paderborn started his studies at the University of Hamburg this winter semester. He has been looking for an apartment for three months. There has hardly been a moment in the last few weeks when the topic wasn't in the back of the first-year student's mind. He has not yet found a long-term home.

According to this year's student housing report, a shared room in Hamburg costs an average of 734 euros. While rental prices in Berlin, Cologne and Stuttgart have recently fallen in the student segment, prices in Hamburg have continued to rise - with a decreasing supply.

The Hamburg housing market is increasingly divided into two parts, says Pfeiffer. On the one hand, there are the publicly viewable apartment advertisements that are offered on common search portals. However, the majority of apartments are not arranged through this at all, but rather between people, through vitamin B. Especially for new arrivals, it is almost impossible to find an affordable apartment that is even remotely close to campus.

If you live expensively, you don't just pay for it with money. According to Pfeiffer, housing is closely related to mental health. “Anyone who commutes for several hours every day, has mold in their apartment or is stressed about renting is often also psychologically stressed,” says Benedikt.

Colin is also under constant stress. It takes him almost 90 minutes by public transport from his shared room in Bergedorf to the lecture hall. The 22-year-old medical student moved to Hamburg a year ago. Finding an apartment had previously been difficult, he says. He hardly knew anyone in the city and he couldn't get a place in the student dormitory. Finally, a friend offered him his room for rent.

Actually, the shared apartment in Bergedorf on the outskirts of Hamburg was too far away for the student, from the university, from his new fellow students, from going to the bar in the evening. But he couldn't find an affordable alternative and accepted the offer. Since then he has been paying 550 euros rent for the 15 square meter room.

While Colin has no choice but to continue writing advertisements every day, in cases like the coin-operated machine, the social affairs department can refer people to the door right next to the AStA's information café. Lukas Bowen, lawyer at the Hamburg Tenants' Association, offers free advice every second Friday in the AStA's premises. The two-hour consultation hour is regularly fully booked.

Renting out furnished and temporary living space is often an issue. According to the tenants' association, this is a common practice through which landlords try to circumvent the rent cap that has been in effect in Hamburg since 2015. Furnishing surcharges would not make it clear what the total rent is made up of. A comparison with the local comparative rent is therefore more difficult.

In the 825 euro shared room in which Julius from Paderborn finally found accommodation for October after a three-month search, there is nothing more than a mattress. Julius says he doesn't want to stay longer than the one month rental period anyway. The price was way beyond his budget. He doesn't know where he will live from November. He is on the waiting list for a place in a dormitory.

In response to a taz inquiry, the student union announced that – as of October 6th – 1,472 applicants were on the application list for a room from November. Getting a room in a dormitory at short notice is not particularly realistic. 19-year-old Julius knows that too. “But hope remains,” he says.

Even for Colin from Bergedorf, the search for an apartment hasn't ended after more than a year. He estimates that the medical student responded to more than 350 advertisements last year. Most of the offers fell outside his search radius from the start: too expensive. The 380 euro flat-rate housing allowance that the student receives monthly from the Bafög office is not enough to cover his rent in Bergedorf.

He can count on one hand the number of times Colin has been invited to view an apartment in the past year. He is a person of color. And people affected by racism have significantly worse chances on the housing market. This is shown by a representative survey by the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor from 2025.

In an experiment, fictitious applicants with a German-sounding surname were invited to tours more often than people with a surname from the Middle East and North Africa region: invitation rates of around 22 percent for German-sounding names compared to 16 to 17 percent for Arabic, Turkish or African-sounding names. More than one in three Black people surveyed said they had been denied access to a property because of their group affiliation. Among people who are not racially marked, only around five percent report such an experience.

Colin has already been told twice that everything would be fine with his application, he remembers. He only heard his Polish last name from the landlord: “It doesn’t sound so German.”