PEOPLE are sleeping rough on a street with drug addicts at one end and millionaires in skyscrapers and £500,000 flats at the other.
Whitechapel Road runs from the heart of the City of London into Tower Hamlets, connecting the richest and poorest parts of the capital.
Rival gangs of dealers ply addicts along the street with crack, heroin and spice – a synthetic cannabinoid known as the "zombie drug".
Crack user John told the Express: "A lot of people from all over London come to Whitechapel, it’s one of the drug dealing hotspots.
"You’ve got drug users, homeless people and sex workers. We’re on the edge of the city."
Tower Hamlets is home to more millionaires than any other London borough.
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Luxury flats overlooking the addicts can sell for over £1million.
But the area also has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the UK, with 24,000 families on the waiting-list for social housing.
People in the richest parts of Tower Hamlets earn £38,700 more than those in the poorest – the biggest gap in the UK.
Homeless people along Whitechapel Road sleep in tents in the hope of protection against violence and theft.
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Former plasterer Matt said: "I’ve been living in London for 15 years but I injured my leg and couldn’t work.
"I worked refurbishing lots of the biggest homes around here..
"I just want to get a home so I get a job, buy my tools back and start being able to do things again."
Running through much of the historic East End, Whitechapel Road has long been a place of contrasting fortunes.
Most of the women killed by Jack the Ripper lived nearby – and it was in the Blind Beggar pub at the end of the road that Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell.
The warning shots which Ronnie fired moments after the murder can still be seen in the pub's roof and walls.
A park on the west of the street near the skyscrapers of Aldgate is named after Altab Ali, a young Bangladeshi man stabbed to death by racist thugs in 1978.
Tower Hamlets Council said: "Like other inner cities, drug use and homelessness is an increasing issue in Tower Hamlets.
"It is due to a number of complex local and national issues which have been made worse during the cost-of-living crisis.
"There is no easy solution but we are doing everything we can to help.
"Our budgets will only go so far, having been significantly reduced during austerity.
"A greater amount of support is needed from central government to address these problems."
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The Met Police said: "Central East police remain committed to proactively targeting those causing harm within the Tower Hamlets community.
"Drugs and violent crime are inextricably linked and police focus continues on relentlessly tackling these offences and seeking justice for those affected."
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