SEATTLE, WA — Flexibility was what lured Kimberly Wolfe into the gig economy. In 2015, Wolfe, a Seattle native, was working full-time while training in investing, with hopes to start her own real estate business. She was intrigued by the prospect of setting her own hours as a Lyft driver, so she signed up.

"That's the first siren song for all these gigs — it's flexibility," she told Patch. But five years and two gig jobs later, Wolfe, 55, is homeless and living in an encampment in the city. (She preferred not to reveal the exact location.) Declining pay and a wreck that totaled her car, she says, left her unable to afford rent, even as she continues working for the delivery app Caviar.

It was Wolfe's rocky experience as a gig worker that pushed her to join a new campaign by the advocacy group Working Washington to make Seattle the first U.S. city to require a minimum wage for its gig workers — a group numbering in the tens of thousands, according to a 2016 study by the city. Backers of the campaign have reason to think it will find footing in Seattle. Last year, the city extended its minimum wage guarantee to Uber and Lyft drivers through a "Fare Share" program that imposed a new tax on ride-shares, with promises to guarantee a minimum wage for drivers by July 2020.

But other Seattle gig workers are considered independent contractors, making them ineligible for the city's $16.39-an-hour minimum wage for large employers. That includes food delivery workers and drivers for Amazon Flex: Amazon's delivery system staffed by gig workers using their own cars. The "Pay Up" campaign will kick off at a rally Wednesday, where Working Washington will call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour plus expenses for gig workers, a guarantee that tips won't be taken out of workers' salaries — a former DoorDash policy that received widespread criticism — and a requirement that companies disclose how they set their pay rates.

Workers delivered symbolic bags full of peanuts to the Postmates office in downtown Bellevue during a Sept. 2019 protest. (Patch file photo/Neal McNamara) That call for transparency is key for Wolfe, who said she never got a clear explanation for why her pay decreased by about 20 percent in the five years she drove for Lyft. (Drivers across the country have complained about similar pay drops.)

"I was never really able to launch because I was working too hard to meet basic expenses," Wolfe said, adding that she never made more than $25,000 per year. "They hide behind their algorithms, this talk of proprietary information. You've got to know what's happening if you want to ask for what's fair."

Last year, Patch found that Uber, Amazon, Lyft and DoorDash employed a combined 4,369 workers on food stamps in Washington state. Lyft declined to comment for this article. Grubhub, Postmates and Instacart have not responded to requests for comment.