95 Dickensian blocks: East London’s contemporary housing landscape Stephanie Polsky Charles Dickens would recognise many familiar features in twenty-irst-century East London I n 1969, Charles Dickens House, a twenty-two-storey tower block on the Mansford Estate in Bethnal Green, stood at the pinnacle of both high-rise living and utopian council housing. Its subsequent fate is emblematic of the precipitous decline of investment in social housing throughout the period since it was built. By 2003, Charles Dickens House had fallen into a state of major disrepair. Internal security was becoming a serious concern for it residents, as was the poor state of the interior of the lats and the dearth of proper insulation throughout the building. When residents approached the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for solutions to these concerns they were met with a serious obstacle. The council simply did not have the necessary resources to restore the block and to bring it structurally up to the Labour government’s Decent Homes Standard. The only solution they could offer was for residents to accept transfer of the management of the estate to Tower Hamlet Community Housing Limited (THCH), a not-for-proit housing association.