Mount Pleasant

Mount Pleasant is one of Vancouver's most densely populated and left-leaning neighbourhoods, stretching from Cambie Street to Clark Drive between Great Northern Way and 16th Avenue at Kingsway. With a population of roughly 33,000, it is defined by its Main Street commercial strip, its concentration of craft breweries along the historic Brewery Creek corridor, and a street art scene anchored by the annual Vancouver Mural Festival. The neighbourhood is overwhelmingly renter-occupied — about 61 percent of households rent, compared to about 55 percent city-wide — and its housing stock is almost entirely low- and mid-rise apartments. The median age is 35.5, well below the city average, reflecting a population dominated by young professionals in the creative, technology, and knowledge sectors.

Mount Pleasant's left-leaning voting pattern is among the most consistent in Vancouver. The provincial riding of Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and its predecessor Vancouver Centre have been held by the NDP continuously since 1972 — surviving even the 2001 provincial wipeout that reduced the NDP to just two seats. At the municipal level, Mount Pleasant was one of only four neighbourhoods where Kennedy Stewart defeated Ken Sim in the 2022 mayoral race, alongside Grandview-Woodland, Strathcona, and Fairview. While Sim won about 50 percent of the vote city-wide, Mount Pleasant voted decisively for Stewart, with the Mount Pleasant Community Centre polling station recording the highest raw Stewart vote count of any election-day poll in the city.

Municipal Issues

The Broadway Plan, approved by council in June 2022 — just four months before the election — was the dominant local issue. The plan permits towers of up to 40 storeys within 150 metres of future SkyTrain stations along the Broadway corridor, a massive increase from previous zoning that capped heights at 8 to 12 storeys. Mount Pleasant residents who had participated in the detailed 2010 Mount Pleasant Community Plan, a 30-year vision that emphasized affordable housing and neighbourhood character, felt that the Broadway Plan overrode years of community planning. The new Mount Pleasant Station at Broadway and Main Street will bring rapid transit directly into the neighbourhood but also intensified concerns about displacement and the loss of the area's low-rise character.

Gentrification has been reshaping Mount Pleasant for decades. Household incomes rose 79 percent in inflation-adjusted terms between 2006 and 2016, while the visible minority population declined by 15 to 20 percent in parts of the neighbourhood over the same period. What was once a working-class and immigrant community has become a corridor of boutique shops, tech offices, and condominium developments. Rents have climbed steeply, and the neighbourhood's light industrial lands — home to the innovation economy and the remnants of its manufacturing past — face mounting pressure for residential conversion.

Mount Pleasant's northern boundary abuts the Downtown Eastside, making street disorder and the opioid crisis viscerally local concerns. The East Hastings encampment of roughly 200 people in about 180 structures in the months before the election, combined with the release of the documentary Vancouver Is Dying ten days before voting, sharpened the tension between the neighbourhood's support for harm reduction policies and the city-wide concern over public safety that powered ABC Vancouver's sweep. Mount Pleasant voters backed Stewart and the incumbent approach, but they were a shrinking minority in a city that voted for change.