Kennedy Stewart will be the next mayor of Vancouver after a nail-bitingly close race to the finish against NPA candidate Ken Sim. He will now preside over a city council that is at once more progressive and more conservative than the previous council. “Was that close enough for you?” Stewart said to roaring applause in the basement of the Waldorf Hotel in east Vancouver. Stewart beat Sim by just under 1,000 votes, according to unofficial election results posted on the City of Vancouver website. Independent candidate Shauna Sylvester placed third. During an election dominated by housing and unaffordability, Stewart promised to build tens of thousands of non-market housing units, create a new city position to advocate specifically for renters and form a Downtown Eastside emergency task force to address the opioid crisis. “Today people voted to take action on these challenges,” he said. “What we do has to make life better for everybody. .. At Stewart’s event, former NDP MP Libby Davies said the success of progressive politicians in this year’s municipal election was driven in part by a popular backlash against Vancouver’s developer community: “I feel like we’re in a period of time now where most people feel like developers have too much control over City Hall, they have too much influence over what’s going on in terms of development,” she said.