Most people in Forest Gate are young and rent their homes. About six in ten households rent. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Couples with children and people living alone turn up in roughly equal numbers. Owning a home here puts a household in the minority.
About 39% of households own their home and about 40% rent from a private landlord, with social renting making up most of the rest. That leaves private landlords holding slightly more of Forest Gate's front doors than the owners who live behind them.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census. The median age is 34, and about 36% of residents are between 25 and 44. The typical resident is old enough to have stopped sharing with friends, and still young enough to be renting.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income across Forest Gate at about £62,100 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged over the area. That figure is before tax, rent and the commute have taken their share.
About 21% of households are one person living alone, and about 6% are pensioners living alone, who are counted within that 21%. Couples with dependent children make up about 22% of households, and lone parents about 14%. Pensioners living alone are rare here, and the households with children are split almost evenly between couples and lone parents.
About 37% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 23% have no qualifications at all, with full-time students around 4%. Graduates and residents with no qualifications live on the same terraced streets and wait at the same bus stops.
About 84% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Newham's rate of deaths from preventable causes, about 153 per 100,000, is similar to England's, and smoking across the borough, at about 11%, is also similar to the national level.
On the measures used to judge a neighbourhood, Forest Gate comes out poorly, with most households renting and nearly a quarter of adults without qualifications. Those figures describe the pressure on the place more than the people living in it.