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SOMETIME AFTER 6 last Tuesday morning, Jack Skiles and Ernst Morrel left their campsite at Saltwater State Park in Des Moines and headed for work. They were running late. They like to catch the first bus of the day for Seattle, so Jack can be at the Millionair Club charity in Belltown shortly after it opens at 6. That's when he has the best chance of securing one of the day-labor jobs that employers call in to "the Club."

Now, at 7:45, Jack and Ernst are among a hundred or so men and a handful of women waiting along rows of long Formica tables for the Club's job dispatcher to call their names. They begin to explain how they wound up here. It's a complicated story that takes several sittings to tell—complicated like the practical challenges of trying to find and hold down work while you don't even have a place to live.

But Jack and Ernst are hardly in a unique position. According to the city of Seattle's annual yearlong survey, the number of homeless reporting some form of employment or income (including unemployment insurance) nearly doubled between 1996 and '97, to almost 20 percent of the 2,563 individuals residing in city-funded shelters. A separate survey by the Seattle-King County Coalition for the Homeless, taken on just one night in 1997, found that 28 percent of shelter dwellers were employed—up from 21 percent the year before; 3 percent more drew unemployment insurance.

Karen Dawson, manager of the city's survival services program, believes both surveys probably undercount the working homeless, missing those who, like Jack and Ernst, live outside the shelter system. Those folks may sleep in their cars, at formal campsites like Saltwater's, at informal ones like the on-again, off-again Beacon Hill Jungle, in chairs at the airport—or, if they're able and inclined to splurge for a night or so, at an Aurora Avenue motel.

In shelters and out, the working homeless defy the easy stereotypes of the down-and-out as crazies or drug-addicted bums. But they are also a diverse group. Some have steady jobs; others work when they can. A number do have addictions or other severe personal problems; others are too free-spirited to hold onto a job or stick to one locale for long; still others worked regular jobs all their lives before getting upturned by a divorce, layoff, or other crisis.

In the past, those characteristics could land a person on hard times but not necessarily lead to homelessness. City officials and social service advocates say the times have changed for one reason: Seattle's crazy housing market, where a new tenant must plop down $2,000 or more in rent and deposits.

Consider this sampling of those staying at the Salvation Army's William Booth Center: A 31-year-old office temp worker who overcame a cocaine addiction. A 51-year-old telecommunications engineer, who moved here from Los Angeles. On the way, someone stole his $2,000 box of tools, nixing the job he had counted on. Fortunately, a premier company servicing Microsoft and Boeing recently agreed to take him on without tools. Another fiftyish resident, laid off three years ago by Weyerhaeuser's recycling plant, works 15 hours a week doing property maintenance and has shelter staff wake him at 1 in the morning so that he can study for a business degree at Shoreline Community College.

JACK AND ERNST, a gay couple, are likable guys who seem remarkably open and almost naive despite the harshness of their circumstances. They tell a tale of fresh starts gone awry, of all the ways they can't quite make life work for them, that's at once particular and universal.

They met in Dallas about a year ago, when both lived in normal housing. Jack, 36, a small-built man with close-cropped hair and intense eyes, worked as a certified nursing assistant. Forty-six-year-old Ernst, wiry and wearing a baseball cap over shaggy brown hair, had lived close to the edge for most of his life, working a series of brief jobs, sometimes as a blackjack dealer or cook at ski resorts. It turned out the man he'd lately lived with had jumped parole and had to go back to jail.

Neither of them really liked Dallas, particularly its heat. So they headed north on something of an adventure. In Minnesota, they hooked up with a carnival, running two food concession stands that they lugged from town to town with their cars. That ended when Ernst got into a car accident.

They returned to Dallas, Jack quickly found a nursing-assistant position that paid so well, Ernst didn't need to work. But the expiration date on Jack's professional license snuck up on him; during the three weeks it took to get it renewed he couldn't work, and they lost their apartment. They moved again, this time to Albuquerque, where they heard jobs were plentiful and housing cheap. They made out fine there. But Ernst itched to return to the Northwest, where he grew up and where he dreamed of living out in the country. "Ultimately, the plan is to get 5 acres," he says. "I could build a home and grow everything we need."

So the two men loaded up their '79 Honda Civic with camping gear and staples like rice and beans. "I figured if things got bad, we could always use the beans for protein," Ernst says.