Gregor Robertson finished his campaign the way he started it – with a pledge to end homelessness in Vancouver.

The Vision Vancouver candidate and former NDP MLA was declared mayor in what amounted to a landslide victory Saturday night.

It appeared seven of eight Vision council candidates had secured spots on the ten-person council (11 including the mayor). Only Suzanne Anton from the ruling Non-Partisan Association was elected, the party's worst showing in years.

"We are going to end homelessness in Vancouver," Robertson told cheering supporters at the Hotel Vancouver.

Robertson has pledged to end homelessness by 2015, a promise he tried to temper in his speech.

"Building homes will take years," Robertson said. "And too many people are forced to sleep on the streets tonight. Too many people are unable to find safe and clean shelter."

In the end, the election result wasn't close, with Robertson appearing to snag almost 20,000 more votes than Ladner.

In the last week of the election, Ladner appeared to suffer most from the fallout surrounding an alleged $100-million loan the city approved to the developers of the 2010 Olympic Village. The city has yet to confirm the loan but an anonymously-sourced newspaper report proved to be an explosive issue as the campaign winded down. Robertson alluded to the controversy in his speech.

"We understand that many people have lost confidence in city hall over the $100 million bailout of the … Olympic Village," he said. "When the city uses public money the public has a right to know where it's being spent and what it's being used for."

Preliminary results suggested Vision elected seven of its eight council candidates: Raymond Louie, Kerry Jang, Heather Deal, Tim Stevenson, George Chow, Geoff Meggs and Andrea Reimer.

The left-wing party COPE appeared to elect David Cadman and Ellen Woodsworth, giving the centre-left in Vancouver what appears to be a commanding 10-1 vote on council, with the NPA's Anton representing the only centre-right vote.

The near sweep "overjoyed" former Vision mayoral candidate Jim Green, who narrowly lost the mayoralty to the NPA's Sam Sullivan in 2005.

"I think it's the best thing that could happen to the city," Green said. "It looks like we're going to have very little opposition on council. Which means we can really now deal with homeless issues."

The civic left in Vancouver also swept through other levels of government. Vision elected all four of its candidates at school board. COPE elected three trustees and the NPA two.

And at the park board level, Vision elected all four of its candidates again, with COPE, the NPA and the Greens all electing one each.

The new council will be sworn in the first week of December.

Irwin Loy reports for 24 Hours and is a contributor to the Hook.