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This summer, Jesse Kirkpatrick and Jackie Myerion were evicted from their basement apartment and forced into the awful situation of having to camp in a Vancouver park with their two children.

The couple had been living in an affordable Surrey suite for a year, and were asked to leave so their landlord’s relatives could move in. They were unable to find anything in their price range, and after living briefly with relatives, they ended up homeless.

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“We were looking daily for houses to have a place to live. I stopped work just so we could do that. We couldn’t find anything at all,” said Kirkpatrick.

Myerion said it was an extremely stressful time: “Some days felt very, very long.”

According to a new report from the Union Gospel Mission and the University of B.C. that was released on Thursday — at the tail end of a municipal election campaign during which housing and affordability have become top issues — families like Kirkpatrick and Myerion’s are at the greatest risk of becoming homeless because of a lack of affordable rentals and low vacancy rates that have spread to the suburbs in recent years.