All from today's Evening Standard:
Exhibit One (no link)
State schools in London risk becoming victims of their own success by pushing house prices up so high that teachers cannot afford to live near them, a senior mayor has warned.
Exhibit Two
A popular vegetarian restaurant is set to close after 40 years of trade in Covent Garden because the owners cannot afford to pay spiralling rent prices.
Food For Thought, in Neal Street, runs as a co-operative and counts celebrities and West End stars as regular customers.
Exhibit Three
The West End’s historic Chinatown will “disappear in five years” as oriental restaurants are squeezed out by rising rents and soaring property prices, traders said today.
The cheap and cheerful grid of streets lined with red lanterns and restaurants between Leicester Square and Soho have been popular with theatre-goers, office workers, late-night revellers and tourists since the 1950s.
Landlords Shaftesbury PLC, which owns 71 premises in the area, saw profits grow by almost 50 per cent in the six months to the end of March 2014.
A spokesman for Shaftesbury said: “The company, whose ownership in Chinatown has been built up over 50 years, has demonstrated a long-term commitment to supporting the local community through its strategy of creating lively, prosperous and interesting destinations in the West End for visitors, those working in the area and residents."
Exhibit Four
A run-down row of Edwardian villas once home to a community of squatters has been restored after decades of neglect — with some flats now up for rent at more than £3,000 a month.
The six blocks in Rushcroft Road, Brixton, were seized back by Lambeth council during violent clashes in 2013. During the eviction, squatters, some of whom had lived there rent-free for more than 30 years, fought with bailiffs, with furniture set ablaze in the street.
The 47 properties have been gutted and renovated in a project funded by the sale of half the block to private developers for a reported £2.5 million.