Isolation and leak issues, balcony doors blocked, and cracks on the wall. These are the current and persistent issues for tenants in student accommodation Pålsjöäng.
International students are worried about the future of living in the student accommodation Pålsjöäng. One of the tenants is Philippe Henrotte, and he is studying a master’s degree in Business Engineering.
He shows a crack in the wall of the newly built building, and protests that “The building is very new, such problems shouldn’t exist!”.
“There is a spot where the paint is going away when it rains because the walls are not completely waterproof,” emphasizes Philippe Henrotte.
Problems were definitely persistent at the beginning of the year, but many repairs have been made in order to improve the living standards of Pålsjöäng.
“LuAcc came to fix both the shower curtain rod and the leaking sink in quite a short delay,” says Hugo Delinger, a student studying law.
Photo: Lukas J. Herbers.
Mahé Rhinoplote, an exchange student in Hydrology also explained that “they changed my neighbours’ windows and balcony door. There were a lot of problems with these openings and some students cannot go on their balcony simply because the door cannot open or some cannot even close them… “.
Even so, some are still waiting for reparations. Hugo Delinger has been a “victim” of this broken door issue. He adds: “The most unacceptable issue is clearly the fact that my balcony door has never been fixed, so that I never could access my balcony.”
This issue may be also unsafe for international students, who cannot escape the room in the case of a fire.
“Changing the balcony door takes a long time because the doors come from China and we have to find them in Sweden. The problem is that the Swedish ones do not fit in the Chinese ones,” explains Linda Petersson, head of LU Accommodation Department.
Pricey Pålsjöäng
The most revolting issue is that students are not compensated for these disturbances but instead pay a rent that is overpriced.
“The rent of one room is around 4500 SEK, depending on the heating consumption. For what we get, the rent is really expensive compared to LuAcc in Klostergården,” Mahé Rhinoplote highlights.
One student added that “For the meantime, we will be “enjoying” our stay in the most expensive, newest, but also the most abandoned one in Lund.”
Photo: Lukas J. Herbers
Some improvements for 2015
Pålsjöäng is a student housing district built in a short space of time during 2013. ”The time aspect was really the top priority. To build fast and as cheap as possible,” says Sara van Lunteren, Service Manager at LuAcc.
As Lundagård wrote in May 2014, an existing problem persisted about the responsability of Pålsjöäng accommodations’ issues between LuAcc, the CEO of Modular Living – the company that built the housing accommodation — and Prime Living which handle the fault reports and maintenance through an external company.
However, the dialog between these three actors is going to improve in 2015, according to Linda Petersson, in order to be more reactive and broadcast the information quicker.
“We are trying to get the corporation to work better”.
She repeated how important it is for the international students to signal through the fault report any problem in the apartment because only then they know what are the problems are and they can repair them.
