One of my small luxuries in life is having someone come to my house weekly and clean it. I tell myself I need this service because I am so busy, but truth is it’s a luxury for me. I can afford it and to be honest I have the time to take care of my own mess; I just hate doing it.

Karen is the one who takes care of this for me. She is 24 is always cheerful. She does an excellent job and in good time as well.  She is a friend of a friend and when I heard she was interested in providing this service, I decided to hire her.

When I asked her what she charged, she asked if $15 per hour would be okay. I had two reactions to her question. One had to do with her request being a great deal. If I were a business I might have equated her wage request as a way of minimizing the cost of her labour on my bottom line. But I am not a business. I am just a guy who dislikes doing his own housework. My second reaction was the stronger of the two. I told her I would pay her $25 per hour. In my mind, anything less would be wrong.

She was happy to hear that and thanked me. Actually she was a tad too exuberant about it, which made me uncomfortable. It’s not easy work to clean someone else’s mess. I figure people who do that should be paid a good wage and that’s what I told her. I told her I was grateful she was willing to help me out. And I encouraged her not to undersell herself.

Sometimes I am home when she is over and we talk. It’s the usual chatter back and forth but over time I have gotten to know a bit about her. Her story is one I think others should hear about.

Karen wasn’t yet 21 when she gave birth to her daughter, Millie. Neither she nor her boyfriend, the father, wanted to get married. In fact, I got the impression Karen was close to breaking things off when she found out she was pregnant. He was a decent enough guy, she told me, and he did what he could to help out with support, but it sounds like he barely made ends meet, too. 

Shortly after Millie was born, Karen applied for an apartment through Edmonton Housing, which bases rent on income. She wasn’t making much money and couldn’t afford a place on her own.  Despite having a high school education, she couldn’t find a decent paying full time job. So she ended up working retail or at fast food places, none of which provided full-time hours, much less a living wage. And, to boot, none of the jobs she found offered benefits. In fact, from what I could surmise, all of her employers kept her hours down so that they didn’t have to offer her anything “extra.”

Up until six months or so ago, she shared a small suite with her best friend. It was a one-bedroom and her friend, who herself was struggling to get by, only had a single bed, which meant that Karen slept on the couch. Millie’s crib, which Karen bought at a second-hand store, was set up in the corner of the living room. Of course, Millie grew out of the crib and that meant she got the couch and Karen slept on a foamy next to her on the floor.

Every so often, Karen would check where she was on the Edmonton Housing wait list. Recently she told me that she had checked again. There were tears in her eyes as she told me the wait was three years. Given the work I do, I knew there was a long wait for a place at Edmonton Housing, but I didn’t realize how bad it really was. Nearly four years after applying, Karen was telling me the wait would be another three years. I have to admit I had a hard time believing the wait could be so long. I wondered to myself if somehow she had gotten lost in the shuffle.

One day – again, six months ago – her roommate told her she was moving back in with her parents. I am sure that’s another story that should be told, but my focus here is on Karen. At the time, Karen was working retail (and still is) for $11.25 per hour but was lucky if she got 25 hours a week at the store. She had started out at the minimum wage, but her boss told her she was so good at her job, she deserved a raise. Karen asked if she could have more hours but was informed they only offered part-time work.

Everyone at the store was part-time by the way. Apparently this is a common practice, a way to keep labour costs down. That’s when Karen decided to try housecleaning and she does have a few customers, but none as regular as me or that pay as well.

Karen is fortunate that Millie’s father is actively involved with his daughter. So when Karen explained she had to go live with her mother a few kilometres out of town, he agreed to take care of his daughter during the week. He had married by then and he and his wife were living with family and able to ensure Millie was cared for during the day.

Karen doesn’t have a car and public transportation into Edmonton is insufficient to support Karen’s trek to and from work each day, much less accommodate her part-time cleaning work. Her mother is helpful and either lends Karen her car or drives her into town, but there are limits to just how often she can provide such assistance.

For whatever reason (I didn’t want to pry), Karen did not feel good about her daughter living with her at her grandma’s. It was hard for her to ask her ex-boyfriend if he could take care of Millie during the week. She strikes me as a good, loving mother and I could tell she was distressed to go from being a full-time mom to a weekend parent.

Karen is a prime example of what it means to be a hard working single mother living poor. Low wages, less than full-time work, no benefits, and an unbearable wait for affordable housing are the burdens she bears on a daily basis. She doesn’t make enough money to save anything. She pays some rent to her mother and contributes for gas and food, and she spends most of the rest on clothing and toys for her daughter.

Every so often she slips a few dollars to her ex-boyfriend. He tells her she doesn’t have to do that, but as she told me, she needs to do it. I understood that. I imagine you do, too.

The last time she was over she talked about her interest in doing safety work in the oil patch, but that she couldn’t afford going to school for her certificate. I mentioned school loans or grants as a possibility, but she shrugged me off. How would I live? Where would I live? How could I take care of Millie while I did that? Those were among her questions. I really didn’t have any answers for her.

At Bissell Centre, there are many stories to tell of people living homeless and in deep poverty, and many get the support and interventions they need to escape street life. But Karen has never gone to an agency like Bissell Centre. She just keeps plugging away, hoping that one day she can find a good, full-time job with an employer whose concern for the bottom line is balanced with the desire to be a good, caring employer that pays a decent wage, with benefits.

I have asked her if she wants me to see if I can help her, make a few calls, or see if one of my staff can help her out. She has no interest in me doing that. She said she doesn’t want to mix up her job with me getting involved in her business. I understood that, as well.

I am writing this the day after she was over. My house is clean. The kitchen counters shine, the floors are washed, and sheets are clean. Even my towels are folded and put away, something I never asked her to do.

Of course, I don’t know Karen’s whole story. All I know is what she has shared with me over a coffee. I like her. I like talking to her. But she knows she is here to do a job and she never dallies very long. She finishes her coffee and then gets to work, just like most of us do every day to earn a living.

Except I am making a good one. And she isn’t.

In Edmonton, I sit on the Mayor’s Task Force to End Poverty. It’s a tall order but I can’t see how we could have a goal that is anything less than doing that. Yes, we will have to figure out how to house the homeless and then how to support their journey toward a better life in the community. But for every homeless person we can help, I have a feeling there are ten Karen’s in the community who are struggling to find good work and an affordable place where they can raise their children in what many of us believe is a strong economy.

Problem is the economy is not working for Karen and the thousands of people like her. And our housing programs are not sufficient to provide that basic need.

I think we have to change how all of that works more so than expect Karen to somehow overcome on her own all of the barriers she is facing as a young woman with a small child that she wants to take care of, just like all parents do, just like my parents did. Probably yours too.

By the way, I asked her how she was doing finding other customers like me. It’s hard, she said, given where I live and the problem I have in getting places. Then she added that no one else pays as much as she makes cleaning my house. I took your advice, she told me, and asked for what I believe I am worth. But no one else saw it that way.

I am sorry to hear that, I told her.

She shrugged it off and told me it was okay. That’s just how things are, she said. I am used to it

That was the saddest part of this little story for me.

How about you?