Unpopulair opinion incoming: No, you are not talking bs and I do not have the ambition to be a real estate broker (makelaar) but actions like encouraging people to take action against high rents will only be negatieve for renters. Let me tell you why. The pointsystem on which the huurcommissie bases its decision was made up when houses where like 50k in guilders (old Dutch currency) and when pay checks or monthly incomes where in line with the prices of houses. Now that last thing is very important. The website Geenstijl had an article about it that if the average inkomen would still be in line with the housing proces it should be 3,5 times what it is now. 3,5 times! If the incomes would have gone up people would have no trouwde in finding a house to buy and would rent less. This would also have made it clear to our government that we have a housing shortage years ago. Because the incomes did not go with the housing prices demand for social housing increased because people could no longer afford to buy a house. This did not happen overnight but the problem was bound to explode like a volcano. This happened last year. So, the prices of houses went up. Now it becomes mathimatical. If you buy a house with 3 bedrooms that (in the big cities) is going to cost you 450k, with a mortgage of say 2.4%.. can you rent out the rooms according to the pointsystem? The answer is no. Well is the argument then; people or organisations, companies should not buy up these houses to rent out. Valid argument, but remember... there are few people who can a mortgage of 450k. So these houses would then go to the people that can pay for them and would live in them. The result? Less rooms for those who would like to live in the city but cannot afford it. A much heard argument is the prohibition of owning more than 2 houses except for social housing companies and a few others like the Blijf-van-mijn--lijf foundation. Noble initiative but again it is only going to help the rich. The housing prices will not go down because the demand for houses in the big cities (especially Utrecht and Amsterdam) will stay the same. The extra owned houses now in private hands will be bought by people who can and.... the rooms for renters will dramatically decrease. The answer is not a populair one: if you are not willing to pay a rent which is not following the pointsystem of the huurcommission but is fair according to recent housing prices and mortgage prices.... dont start renting and go somewhere else. But dont take it and then start complaining. Because that will only discourage people from buying a house and putting that up for rent (per room). You where not able to buy that house in the first place so be glad someone bought it and wants to rent out rooms. It could also go to a mom and dad with kids. Result? 3 or 4 rooms less on the housing market. So stop complaining about rent who are perfectly in line with nowadays housingprices and mortgages and if you do not want to pay those rents... start buying.