The Olympic Village
The former Olympic Village has achieved a high occupancy rate since being made available to Londoners, with excellent transport links to the city centre enhancing its appeal.
Situated in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and now known as East Village, the former Olympic Village is a community of 3,300 homes. Approximately half of them are market-priced homes, around a quarter are intermediate “affordable” homes for people on middle incomes, and a further quarter are for social rent. The original plans for the Olympic Park proposed 35 per cent of “affordable” housing.
More than 6,000 people live in East Village and all “affordable” and social rent homes are now occupied. The development’s overall occupancy rate stood at 95 per cent in 2016. Around 500 new homes to rent were launched at East Village in spring 2019, while a further 1,500 homes are due for completion from 2021 onwards.
East Village and the Olympic Park are all well served by high-speed rail links and bus services. Stratford Underground Station lies close by, and the future Elizabeth Line will also connect to the area. Stratford is now second only to King’s Cross as the most connected part of the British capital. In addition to a wide variety of shops, cafes, bars and restaurants, East Village also has three communal children’s play areas, two hotels, a gym, and a health and well-being centre. A new school, Chobham Academy, created from the Olympic health and drug testing centre, opened in 2013. It provides 1,800 places for local children aged three to 18.
East Village’s homes are part of a total of 11,500 that are already complete on and around the Olympic Park. A further 23,000 will be delivered by 2036, including five new neighbourhoods on the park. Several hundred homes have already been delivered at one of them, Chobham Manor, while construction is also under way at another of new neighbourhoods, East Wick. Ten per cent of all these homes will be wheelchair-accessible and more than a third will be “affordable”, with many built for long-term rent and to buy. These neighbourhoods will include access to new primary schools, nursery schools and health centres. It is hoped that 55,000 people will be living across the park as a whole by 2031.
Counterbalancing these positive aspects is criticism from local residents about rent and house price increases and gentrification of the area. Despite some affordable housing provision in new developments, the rising prices means some on low incomes can’t find the accommodation they need in the area. The area around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has seen one of the highest house price inflations in the UK during the last 10 years. Homelessness and housing shortages remain an issue for the city. It has also been argued that the area would been developed without the Olympic Games, through the Stratford City project that was launched in the late 1990s.
Stratford was chosen as the site of the Olympic Village because of its location and the need to revitalise what was one of London’s poorest and most isolated areas, an area afflicted by high crime rates and unemployment. Funded through a tried-and-tested public-private partnership model, the Village’s 11 residential blocks were built in over four years and have aided the social and environmental transformation of the area. Its homes were retrofitted prior to welcoming their first residents in 2013.