Utrecht students feel unsafe with phone keys, SSH unmoved

Student housing provider SSH sees no reason to introduce extra permanent measures for the phone-app door keys in its Utrecht buildings, although residents say they feel unsafe because the app often fails. In a reply to tenants' organisation BoKS, SSH said the current set-up offers "a good balance between ease of use, manageability, future-proofing and safety".

BoKS has repeatedly held talks with SSH without result. It proposed making a physical key fob or tag available to every student, and installing charging points at building entrances so that people with an empty phone can charge it and get in. A physical key can now be bought for €200.

Anyone who arrives with a flat phone has to hope a neighbour opens the door. "There is no guarantee that someone will come to help you," a resident says. "I've always got a power bank on me, because I just don't want to risk not being able to get home."

Residents say the app does not always work, so some wedge the sliding doors open with objects. A resident says a homeless person then came in and slept and urinated in the stairwell.

An SSH spokesperson says the company understands that a homeless person getting in makes residents feel unsafe. Two employees checked the doors and the access system, and SSH says everything is technically in order.

The digital key was first tested in Rotterdam in 2024 and later introduced in Groningen and Utrecht.