LONDON OLYMPIC STADIUM REDEVELOPMENT FREE
When she first rented an apartment there in 2008, she was given six months’ free rent and told to keep the lights on at night so that the real estate agents could show that people already lived in the area. Can feels at how the area has developed is tinged with fear that she, too, will be edged out. Many have fled for lower rents elsewhere. She runs an affordable work space for artists on the edge of the Olympic Park, in Hackney Wick, where plastic was first made in the 19th century and a large community of artists had settled. Now, she feels a “bittersweetness” when she looks at how it has been transformed. A redevelopment between 20 to transform the Olympic. The landmark structure on the capital’s skyline initially cost £486 million when built to house the 2012 London Olympics.
Juliet Can, who grew up in Stratford, remembers a time when all she wanted to do was get out of east London. Converting the former Olympic Stadium to the London Stadium when it became home to the West Ham football club was a significant civil engineering feat. “The Olympics is a good way of fast gentrifying your area, but what it means for working-class people is, ‘Get them out.’” “You’re still in the borough with one of the highest homelessness rates in London,” Ms. Many feel that promises of prosperity have been broken, said Saskia O’Hara, who campaigns for Focus E15, a group calling for more affordable housing.
The governing London Assembly has criticized the development corporation for the speed at which affordable housing is being completed. House prices in the areas around the Olympic Park are estimated to have risen 64 percent in the five years after the Olympics. But in the frenzy of construction, many long-term residents are wondering whether they will see the gains from the towers that puncture the skyline around them.