We informed earlier about the changed rules concerning friend swaps in AYY apartments. The practices will come into force on 1 Dec 2012. This is a reminder about the new practices and clarification about what they will actually mean for AYY tenants.

If one person moves out from a family or friend apartment, the remaining tenant is offered a chance for a friend swap, if

• the lease of the apartment has lasted continuously for at least six months, with no friend swaps.

Normally the lease of a friend or a family apartment ends, if a friend or a spouse moves out from the apartment. With a friend swap, the tenant can keep his/her old apartment and keep living in it with a new friend/spouse. The new friend/spouse must be

• a person who lives in an AYY apartment already, before the friend swap.

This is based on the stand, that new tenants for AYY apartments are always chosen from the queues. A friend swap means that AYY tenants can be moved from AYY apartments to other AYY apartments. It can’t be used to skip the queuing completely, by using a friend’s apartment to get into an AYY apartment without queuing for it.  This means, that all completely new AYY tenants have to be chosen based on applications and queuing.

People living in AYY apartments can be offer a friend swap, because they have already queued for their first apartment and will leave that one empty for the next applicant from the queue, when they move to the new friend or family apartment.

All exceptions to these practices are granted by the Housing Committee. If you wish to apply for something outside of these rules, send a written application (with attachments and reasons) to AYY Housing Office.