East End Shows Thousands in Illegal Squalor Near London Olympics

Five thousand meters from London’s gleaming, white-spoked Olympic Stadium -- a 3.1-mile distance that games organizer and gold medalist Sebastian Coe once ran in 14 minutes and 6 seconds -- Christine Lyons has ferreted out a modern-day scene evocative of Victorian England.

In a side street with cracked, weedy paving covered in litter and rubble, just past an old stable, she knocks at a whitewashed shed built of bricks. A Hungarian couple in their 20s open the door to the single room they rent for 155 pounds ($240) a week. There’s barely space to walk around a bed, a chair, a table, a bicycle, a rack covered with drying clothes and a sink on the wall. A bathroom is closed off in a corner. A bare light bulb hangs in the middle of the ceiling.