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Business heeds the cry for help

The owner of Rent-A-Hand tapped into a never-ending need. She also started Rent-A-Ride.

By SHARON L. BOND
Published November 13, 2005

SOUTH PASADENA - Carol R. Ehrenkranz is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rent-A-Hand Inc. by adding more services, but at the same time she's thinking of selling.

"I'd like to sell next year. But it has to be the right person. This has been my baby. I will still be living here," said Ehrenkranz, who is in her 60s and figures she will be ready for a break after so many years.

She started Rent-A-Hand in 1986 to provide house cleaning, transportation to doctor visits, food preparation and companionship to elderly people. "At that time, we had quite a few live-ins," she said, referring to workers who lived with elderly clients. These days, she said, it is hard to find staffers who want to live with clients.

Rent-A-Hand uses independent contractors to supply its services. It has two men and 14 women who, in addition to the services mentioned above, do handyman chores, light gardening, and sitting for babies, dogs and houses. Companionship services include trips to the mall, lectures, sightseeing, reading books and letters, and writing correspondence for clients.

One of the male contractors takes an 85-year-old man out three times a week. They visit the park or go for a drive, "just to get him out of the house," Ehrenkranz said.

She does background and criminal checks on the contractors she hires.

"I have been very lucky. I've never had anything stolen, no kind of catastrophe."

Prices range from $11 per hour for sitting with one child to $16 per hour for homemakers, with a three-hour minimum. Live-in homemakers cost $170 per day. Cleaning services range from $50 for four rooms to $85 for 11 rooms. House cleaning and babysitting are the services most in demand.

"We constantly are in need of house cleaners," she said.

Rent-A-Hand provides babysitters for local hotels, including the Renaissance Vinoy Resort, the Radisson Sand Key and beach hotels. The sitters are all women over age 40, she said.

Rent-A-Hand's income ranges with the services. For example, the company gets 45 percent of charges for homemakers but only 25 percent the price of handyman work. That is because the manual labor is so hard, Ehrenkranz said.

She would not reveal exact figures but says she makes a comfortable living from the company.

Ten years ago Ehrenkranz started another business, Rent-A-Ride, and these days takes about three people a week to Tampa International Airport.

Business has been slow lately. She hopes for increases after Thanksgiving, when many of the winter visitors have returned.

She teamed up with a laundry service that goes to homes and picks up clothes to be washed and dry cleaned. She gets a percentage of the business she directs to the service. She is talking to a woman with a massage clinic who is going to the area hotels offering services at her place in St. Petersburg.

"Guess who would pick them up and take them there," Ehrenkranz said.

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 03:00:43]