Katie Amberson is slowly getting her life on track. She moved here from Phoenix, Ariz., a few years ago with her mother to help take care of her grand-aunt. Since then, her aunt has died, but Katie stayed here. She decided to become a vendor about four weeks ago.
Apart from offering her a sense of community and an income, Street Roots offers Katie something even more essential.
“It helps me get out of the house and go and meet people and do things. I don’t usually like going outside,” she said.
That’s because Katie suffers from claustrophobia, which makes being in a small room very difficult.
“I can’t be in a room with more than, like, five people; otherwise I’ll feel like I’m trapped,” she said.
Katie developed claustrophobia about six years ago but says she’s luckier than others who have the disorder. Her coverage on the Oregon Health Plan gives her the opportunity to obtain medicine and go to the doctor.
In addition to claustrophobia and anxiety, Katie says she has also struggled with her weight. However, that problem is also being remedied. She has been approved for gastric bypass surgery, which she will have Oct. 11.
Other plans include marrying her fiancé, Paul, also a Street Roots vendor. The two met at Sisters of the Road about a year ago, and Katie immediately got a sense that he would become her husband. Last week, Paul proposed to her and gave her an amethyst ring with a silver band that he bought from someone who was selling them on the streets.
“It doesn’t matter how much he paid for it or how he got it,” she said. “It came from the heart.”
Their wedding will not take place until 2017; they want to secure more permanent housing and jobs before tying the knot. Until then, Katie stays in a small apartment with her two cats above the Street Roots office, which she secured through the program Home Forward after being on a waiting list for two years.
“I’m hoping, once all this weight’s gone, to get an actual real job and move out of the building upstairs, and having a bigger apartment, ’cause there’s no room up there at all,” she said.
If she could choose a dream career for herself, Katie would like to be a video game tester, since gaming has been her passion since she was a child.
“I’m amazing at video games. When I’m focused, nobody can get me out of it,” she said.
But until then, Katie enjoys the community she’s found at Street Roots. It is somewhere she can call home.