This should be a national embarrassment in the UK. It isn’t, but it should be. 
Discussion
That whole road is so grim
We lived not terribly far away from there in the 1980s. It wasn’t great, but we could walk home at all hours of the day and not give a thought to it. There used to be a church candle shop on the borders of Bethnal Green and Hackney, I assume that is long gone.