Mice and Mold—Yet a Quality Label: Belgium’s Housing Gap

An undercover investigation by the Flemish consumer programme WinWin has found student rooms across Flanders plagued by mold, damp and vermin that nevertheless carry an official quality certificate. The findings, reported by VRT NWS, raise an uncomfortable question for a region short on affordable student housing: what is such a certificate actually worth?

At the centre of the story is Frauke, an architecture student in Ghent who pays 870 euros a month for a room directly above a flooded cellar. A device in her room records humidity at 80 percent, well above the healthy range of 40 to 60 percent. Because of gaps at the base of the walls and missing skirting boards, mice come up from the cellar below.

“I really do not like living here,” Frauke told WinWin. “My room is right above the cellar, but it is full of water. All the damp and mold come up through the floor to here.”

When she raises the issue, her landlord either does not respond or offers to paint over the mold. Her room, meanwhile, holds a conformity certificate confirming it meets safety, health and quality standards.

A Snapshot That Can Be Concealed

The WinWin team visited 15 rooms in Leuven, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels using a hidden camera. Many showed mold or damp problems and were often very small, yet landlords still charged high rents. Several other students told the programme they face similar conditions.

Dorien van Cauwenberge, a spokesperson for the Flemish housing agency Wonen in Vlaanderen, acknowledged the limitations. A conformity certificate or the newer Flemish kotlabel offers the best guarantee that a room meets quality standards, she said, “but unfortunately it is not a watertight system. Mold, damp and electrical problems are among the top three findings we also make.”

Part of the problem is timing. An inspection is only a snapshot. A landlord can disguise damp with a coat of paint that is invisible in summer but reappears in winter.

A second factor is that students do not always report defects. Many have struggled to find anything at all in a tight market and fear losing their room if they complain. A third is that few students know their rights.

According to the Flemish government’s official guidance on the kotlabel, a room carrying the label meets three criteria: it holds a conformity certificate based on housing-quality norms, it has a positive fire-safety certificate, and it has the correct permit. Since 2025, Flanders has applied a single uniform label across the region so rooms can be compared.

A conformity certificate is issued by the municipality after an inspector checks the property against minimum standards: structural stability, no wood rot in window frames, freedom from damp and mold, no risk of carbon-monoxide poisoning, and safe stairs. Certificates are valid for 10 years in principle unless a municipality sets a shorter term.

Why Problems Slip Through

Van Cauwenberge stressed that the absence of a certificate does not automatically mean a room is unfit. “It is not because a landlord does not have it that it is a bad room. It does offer the best indication that the room is in order, especially if the certificate was issued recently.”

The rules themselves are not the only weak point. Requesting a certificate is voluntary in most Flemish municipalities, though local authorities may make it mandatory by regulation, and a growing number do. Municipalities can also shorten the validity period. In practice, the degree of protection a student enjoys depends heavily on where they study.

A Market Priced Out of Reach

Quality is only half the story. Student housing in Flanders is also becoming more expensive and scarcer. The average rent in Flanders has risen 30 percent over the past five years to 620 euros a month, and many cities face a large shortage of standard student housing, which pushes prices higher.

The cost is forcing students to stay home. A 2025 survey by the housing research centre Steunpunt Wonen, cited in the VRT NWS report, found that half of Flanders’ students live in a room, while of the other half, one in three would have wanted to. The main reason for staying home is the high rent. On the basis of those figures, Steunpunt Wonen estimates that roughly 40,000 students did not move into a room in 2025 because it was too expensive, and about 8,000 could not pursue their study programme of choice as a result.

What Students Can Do

WinWin and the Flemish authorities offer practical steps for students searching for a room. They can look up an address on Geopunt to see whether it has a label or conformity certificate, or has been declared uninhabitable. Bringing an experienced person, such as a parent, to viewings helps. Students are advised not to decide in haste, even under pressure to sign—and to remember that after signing they have three months before the contract starts to cancel.

Before or during the first month of the tenancy, tenants should draw up a place description with the landlord, report defects (which is a legal obligation, not an act of aggression), and know their rights—including that a landlord may not enter without an appointment. Free advice and mediation are available from the student services of universities and colleges.

The Flemish government also provides a search module for checking whether a room carries a kotlabel.

What to Watch

Belgium’s student-housing problem sits at the intersection of two pressures: a quality-certification system that can be defeated by a coat of paint, and a rental market tightening faster than it can be built out. The kotlabel is the region’s attempt to raise standards and push poor rooms off the market. Whether it succeeds will depend less on the label itself than on how rigorously it is enforced—and on whether students, priced into a corner, feel able to report the defects they find.

For now, Frauke’s room is both certified and full of mold. That contradiction is the story.