Lee is a mixed neighbourhood of people in their late thirties, split almost evenly between owning and renting. Half own their home. A quarter rent privately and a quarter rent from a council or housing association. Nearly half have a degree. The typical resident is old enough for a mortgage and young enough to still be paying off the sofa.
About 53% of Lee's households own their home, about 23% rent privately and about 23% rent from a council or housing association. Those three groups rarely sort themselves into separate streets here, so one terrace can hold an owner with a new loft conversion and a housing association tenant who shares their party wall and their bin day.
The median resident is 38, and about 32% of residents are aged 25 to 44. Lee has a large population of people in their working and family years, and with about 2% of residents in full-time education, very few students.
The Office for National Statistics estimates average household income across Lee at about £74,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023. After tax, the same households take home about £51,000. Both are averages modelled for the area, so they hide a wide gap between the households at the top and those at the bottom, and the gap matters more than the figure.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 census, which recorded 32,074 people in 12,842 households. About 29% of households are one person living alone, and about 10% of all households are a single pensioner living alone, a group that sits inside the one-person figure. Couples with dependent children make up about 21% of households and lone parents about 15%. The streets near the primary schools fill at drop-off and empty soon after, because the other half of Lee's front doors open onto a flat with one or two adults behind them.
About 46% of adult residents hold a degree-level qualification, and about 16% have no formal qualifications. Lee holds both ends of that range within a few streets of each other.
About 85% of residents described their health as good or very good at the census. Across the London Borough of Lewisham, the rate of deaths considered preventable is similar to the England average, and so is the smoking rate, at about 9% of adults. Those borough-wide figures cover Lee along with everywhere else in Lewisham, and they describe the borough's overall health more than anything particular to this area.
On the neighbourhood measures, Lee comes out below average. It is a mid-thirties area where comfortable households and harder-pressed ones live side by side, and the averages for income, tenure and qualifications are pulled down by that mix.