Chadwell Heath is home to young families working hard to keep up with the mortgage. Just over half the households own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Most households with children have two parents, though a large share have one. It is a hard-working place more than a comfortable one.
In the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, about 53% of households owned their home, about 27% rented privately and about 19% rented from a council or housing association. Owners are only just in the majority, and the two kinds of renting together come close to matching them.
The median resident is 34, and about 31% of people are aged between 25 and 44. That is the age band for first mortgages, nursery fees and a three-bed terrace bought with more optimism than savings.
Median household income comes to about £67,500 before tax, modelled for the area for the financial year to March 2023. Gross is always the flattering version. By the time tax has come off it and a terrace at about £470,000 has taken its share, the comfort is harder to find.
Families shape the place. About 26% of households are couples with children and about 16% are lone parents. About 23% of households are one person living alone, and pensioners living by themselves account for about 9% of all households within that group. Overall, it is a place built around the school run, with a smaller share of people living alone than a town centre would have.
About 37% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 20% have no formal qualifications, and only about 3% of residents are full-time students. Graduates and people who left school without qualifications live side by side here in roughly equal numbers, and hardly any students do.
About 85% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Redbridge as a whole does better than England on deaths from preventable causes, and its smoking rate is similar to the England average. Those are borough figures, so they describe the wider authority rather than these particular streets.
The people of Chadwell Heath are young, busy and stretched, and less comfortable than the income headline suggests. Most of them are bringing up children on a budget that a London mortgage squeezes hard.