Michael Lindsay leaves at about 7:30 a.m. for his job with a local electrical contractor. Barbara Lindsay starts work even earlier, driving a school bus.

Since moving here last fall from South Carolina, they have split their time sleeping in homeless shelters and in their car as they try to scrape together the money for an apartment.

For a brief time, Michael Lindsay said, he and his wife moved into an apartment they thought they could afford, shortly after she got the bus-driving position and he landed a job working for an auto mechanic.

"Then the [mechanic] shut down his shop, and we couldn't get the money together to keep the apartment," he said. "We've been living in our car and at the shelter ever since.

"I'm working again, but housing here is a lot more expensive than we thought it would be," he said. "Between paying for gas and insurance for the car, buying food and paying to store our things in South Carolina, we haven't been able to save enough for the rent and security for an apartment. It's been hard."

Local housing officials say the Lindsays are part of a disturbing trend: people who work in Dutchess but don't earn enough to pay for a place to live.

"A growing number of our clients are people who have jobs," said Michael Cole, an employee of Hudson River Housing, Inc., a Poughkeepsie-based, not-for-profit agency that runs the county's two homeless shelters.

The average rent for a studio apartment in Dutchess County is $620 per month; for a one-bedroom apartment, it's $882, and for a two-bedroom apartment, $1,054.

The income required for families in Dutchess to rent apartments — assuming they spend 30 percent of their wages for rent — is $27,880 for studio apartments, $35,280 for one-bedroom units and $42,160 for two-bedroom units.

Waiting lists for subsidized housing, such as the federal Section 8 program, were not calculated because they were so long, most agencies were no longer accepting applications.

The vacancy rate for apartments in Dutchess was 2.8 percent. A "healthy" rate that allows for reasonable profits for landlords and reasonable availability for tenants, is estimated at 5 percent.

Agencies that provide services to the homeless — including Hudson River Housing, Inc. and Grace Smith House, a shelter for victims of domestic violence — served a total of 3,489 individuals for at least one night in 2004. This represents an increase of 174 percent over 2002. Hudson River Housing officials said about 18 percent of the homeless clients they served during the first three months of 2006 were employed.

Officials at the county planning department said housing costs did not change significantly in 2005, and they are remaining relatively steady through the first few months of 2006. But those who have been studying the problem for the last several years said they have no reason to believe the situation will get better before it gets worse.

"I'm discouraged," said Jacki Brownstein, who chairs the housing advocacy subcommittee of the Dutchess County Housing Consortium. "I don't see any government official, at any level, planning for housing for working people on the lower end of the economic scale. I don't hear anyone in the community in general voicing concern about what's going to happen to these people."

Brownstein's subcommittee organized a rally in Poughkeepsie last spring, dubbed "Everybody Deserves a Key," to raise awareness about poverty and homelessness here. A second such event is being planned for this spring, she said, and if anything, the problem has worsened since the first rally.

Brownstein is employed as the executive director of the Mental Health Association in Dutchess County, a private agency that advocates for those with mental illness and runs a daytime drop-in center, The Living Room, for homeless men and women.

"Sometimes I think the politicians would like us to stop talking about homelessness," she said. "The attitude seems to be that if we'd just stop pointing out these problems, they'd go away."

Lou Gagliano, another member of the Housing Consortium subcommittee and administrator of a halfway house for recovering drug addicts, said some local not-for-profit agencies maintain some subsidized housing units for the poor.

Kimberly Williams, a recovering addict who was homeless for nearly two years, said she's "one of the lucky ones." She lives in a subsidized apartment at Hillcrest House, owned and operated by Hudson River Housing.

Williams said she earns about $1,200 a month working two jobs, one as a clerk for a local plumbing contractor and the other as a part-time painter and carpenter.

Hudson River Housing uses state grants and other revenue to subsidize Williams' rent at Hillcrest House, charging her one-third of her income — or about $400 a month.

Williams said many people are homeless because of drugs and alcohol, and even when they're in recovery, it's hard to convince many employers — or landlords — to take a chance on them.

"Not all people who are homeless are lazy," she said. "Many, like myself, are hard workers. But try convincing a lot of people of that. And when you do get a job — going from no income to a minimum-wage job — it's a large hill to climb before you can find an apartment you can afford."

Maureen Cronin, property manager for River Management, which oversees about 550 rental units in the Poughkeepsie area, said her firm requires an additional month and a half of the rental charge as a security deposit and $25 per adult for a credit check before prospective renters can sign a lease. For an $800-a-month apartment, the final tab tops $2,000.

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