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Metro Vancouver mayors and those who work with the homeless are hoping to turn the latest survey of Metro’s growing homeless population into a provincial election issue.

“We want this coming forward now, during the election cycle provincially, to make sure that all the provincial parties are hearing this and reacting to it,” Port Moody Mayor Mike Clay, chair of Metro Vancouver’s housing committee, said Monday.

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The homeless in Metro Vancouver — people who don’t have a place of their own where they can stay for more than a month — number 3,605 people, according to a once every three years survey in which about 1,200 volunteers this year fanned across the region over 24 hours on March 7 and 8. Those numbers are up about 30 per cent over the 2014 survey.

Among factors contributing to homelessness, advocates pointed to Metro’s overall high housing prices and scarce rental stock, years of no increases to income assistance and a lack of measures to help youth in foster care transition into adulthood.