The 9th gayest suburb in the country

The 9th gayest suburb in the country

Mt Victoria is one of the top 10 LGBTIQ+ suburbs in Aotearoa, according to the most recent census. Jane O’Loughlin looked at the numbers.

 The character Dafyd Thomas used to proclaim on Little Britain that he was ‘the only gay in the village’ but he would certainly have no grounds for that if he lived in Mt Victoria, which turns out to be one of the gayest villages in the land.

Stats NZ has released demographic profiles of the nation’s suburbs, and one of the demographics that stands out for Mt Victoria is the high proportion of people identifying as LGBTIQ+/rainbow.

According to the 2023 census, 621 out of the 3,840 adults in Mt Victoria identified as LGBTIQ+/ rainbow or 16.20% of the population.  This compares to 4.9% of the population overall who identified as LGBTIQ+.

The Local asked Stats NZ to provide a ranking of the more than 800 ‘statistical area 3’ tracked in the census, by percentage of those ticking the rainbow box.  (This question is limited in the census to those over the age of 15.)

The result? Mt Victoria ranks 9^th overall, and downtown Wellington can proudly lay claim to being the most gay-friendly area in the country, as most of the spots in the top 10 were occupied by other Wellington inner city suburbs.

Taking out the top spot for gayest suburb in New Zealand is Aro Valley with 21.6% closely followed by Mt Cook with 21.4%.

Next are Te Aro (20.2%), Kelburn (19.7%), Newtown (19.1%), and Wellington Central (19%).

The only Auckland entry in the top ten is Eden Terrace (16.8%), the area around upper Queen Street, not far from Karangahape Road, famous for its queer nightlife.

Interestingly, a Nelson suburb takes out 8^th place, but with only 36 residents overall it could be regarded as a statistical quirk.  Following Mt Victoria at 9^th place is Dunedin Centre (15.7%) rounding out the top 10.

For interest’s sake the area that ranked lowest in the country is Weston in the Waitaki district of Canterbury, with just 1% of its population identifying as LGBTIQ+.