Lewisham belongs to renters in their thirties, most of them with a degree and a decent salary. About six in ten households rent. More than half the adults are graduates. A third of households are one person on their own. It is the stage of London life where the career has started and the mortgage hasn't.
Only about 39% of households own their home, according to the 2021 Census, which supplies every population figure on this page. About 33% rent from a private landlord and about 26% from a social landlord. Owners are the minority here, and the landlord, private or public, is the commonest neighbour on most streets.
The typical resident is 35, and about 42% of people are aged between 25 and 44. Lewisham is young without being a student town, and the people in it mostly arrived for a job.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income across the area at about £78,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023. Gross is the figure that reads best on paper, and in a household of two earners in central London jobs, a good share of it goes back out on rent before the month is halfway through.
About 15% of households are couples with dependent children and about 14% are lone parents. Family life here comes in two shapes in close to equal numbers, which makes the school gate a fairly broad cross-section of the town.
About 32% of households are a single person living alone, and about 6% of all households are a pensioner living alone, counted within that single-person group. A third of the front doors in Lewisham open onto a flat with one name on the post, and the older residents are a small part of that.
About 56% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 13% have no formal qualifications, and about 3% are full-time students. The mix runs from the graduate commuter to the resident who left school with nothing on paper, and both groups live within a few streets of each other. With students that scarce, the degrees mostly belong to people who finished them some time ago and moved here afterwards.
At the 2021 Census about 86% of residents described their health as good or very good, and about 4% as bad or very bad. Lewisham borough as a whole sits close to the England average on deaths judged preventable, and its smoking rate, at about 9% of adults, is similar to England's as well, a borough-wide standing that covers far more streets than this one town.
The people of Lewisham are a mixed picture overall: well qualified, healthy and earning, but renting in large numbers and living in a neighbourhood that still has its share of hardship. It is a town for people on the way up, and a fair number of them are still working out where up leads.