By Lisa Chmelecki,Staff Writer

Barbara Ehrenreich thought it would be easy to find a job and a cheap apartment in Maine.

She was right about the job.

Within days, the Florida-based author on a mission to show the true side of welfare reform landed two positions: a full-time gig for $6.25 an hour and a weekend job for about the same pay.

“There were no special obstacles,” she said, speaking from her home near Key West, Fla. “It was quite easy to get extremely low-paying jobs.”

As documented in Ehrenreich’s best-selling book, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” the writer’s biggest – and most unexpected – challenge in Maine was finding a place to live.

“I really expected Maine to be more affordable,” she said.

What Ehrenreich didn’t notice when she visited Maine in the mid-1990s as a guest speaker at a few local colleges was that the southern part of the state was attracting a new type of person: the rich type.

It wasn’t until after she returned in 1998 to do research for her book that she met wealthy telecommuters who moved to Maine for its lack of traffic and ocean-view real estate.

Well, she didn’t actually meet them. She scrubbed their toilets and waxed their floors.

“An influx of affluent people is just a disaster for housing possibilities,” Ehrenreich said, speaking from firsthand knowledge.

In 1998, Ehrenreich left the comfort of the middle- to upper-class to join a growing group of people known as the working poor. She moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking various jobs.

She was a waitress and hotel maid in Florida, a housekeeper and nursing home aide in Maine and a Wal-Mart “associate” in Minnesota.

Published in 2001,”Nickel and and Dimed” is the report of her experiences.

Four years later, the book is still gaining fame. Towns and cities across the country, including Lewiston-Auburn, are choosing it for community reading projects.

“I think that’s wonderful, a real community-building measure,” Ehrenreich said. “People can have conversations with people they don’t even know, people in situations completely different than their own.”

According to Ehrenreich, that is the best hope for change. When speaking at colleges about her book – something she does often these days – Ehrenreich encourages the students to get to know the campus workers.

These people, she said, are often prime examples of the working poor, especially in cities such as Lewiston where mill and factory jobs have been replaced with low-paying jobs in the health care and education industries.

Ehrenreich never did find an apartment in Maine. During her month-long stay, she went from paying $59 a night at the Motel 6 to $120 a week for another motel room in Old Orchard Beach.

She could have found an efficiency or one-room apartment for the same price, but her allotted budget wasn’t enough to pay for the security deposit and last month’s rent that most landlords required.

Until coming to Maine, Ehrenreich never understood why someone would waste the money to stay at a motel.

People who have read the book have shared similar realizations.

One of Ehrenreich’s favorite letters came from a wealthy woman in Florida. Before reading “Nickel and Dimed,” the woman wrote, she never understood why anyone would “choose” to live in a trailer in a hurricane state.

“I thought, Well, that’s progress,'” Ehrenreich said.

It was a rash that contributed to Ehrenreich’s downfall in Maine. A likely result of being elbow-deep in harsh cleaning chemicals, the rash cost her $30 for anti-itch cream, prednisone and Benadryl.

Later in the week, she needed a food voucher to buy groceries.

The author hasn’t returned to Maine since 1998. About two months after she got home, she tried to reach a few of her co-workers from The Maids in South Portland.

She wasn’t surprised when none of the telephone numbers worked.

For the working poor, she said, a tight housing market often leaves little room for settling down.

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