Then again, I didn't take owning a car into consideration. With a car, you should still be able to save money but probably not much... so probably mid 30's to have a good amount of money left over saved for a house.

thanks sewage- ive heard those numbers thrown around quite abit, and i guess its just the skeptical (cynical?) new yorker in me that didnt quite believe that people can live in such a beautiful lively city for that price. i wont have a car at first and intend on just moving there on a bit of a no frills basis at first, since it is exponentially harder finding employment while not actually in the city.

thanks again to all whove posted!! youve all been a great help!

I sure would NOT move here!!! It is getting very crowded because
someone decided to promote PDX and make it the new hip place to live..This endorsement is based mostly becuase of overdevelopment of many overpriced bad quality condos and row houses. Too many of these things have been built and the developers are getting worried. Job market here sucks and the snowpack on hood is diminishing every year. Environmentalist predict a 20% decrease in less than 20 years so Ore is getting ugly which is too bad! Don't waste your time..the glory days of OR are long gone!!!

Oh Yeah!!!!
don't get fooled into thinking that no Sales Tax is a perk. You pay the same prices as you would with Sales Tax but have the bonus of paying a high state income tax which increases incrementally more than most states sales tax! Also, if you think PDX is nice..why don't you stay where you are at and make it nice. The more people that move here the less nice it is....Glory Days are Over!!!

I just moved to NYC from Portland - and the two cities are actually more similar than I expected. When describing Portland to people out here, I actually call it "New York Lite" because I think a lot of (young) people in Portland are one of two things: Striving to be like hip/artsy/fashionable/semi-political New Yorkers, or Already lived in New York (or another major metropolis) and want to be somewhere where it's less intense and easier to make a name for yourself. Of course, there are the regular Oregonians who don't fit into either of these categories, but they're really not that involved in the cultural scene (they're the ones who wear Timberlands and flannel to bars). Just as it is in New York, it's not the townies (or staties) that are making stuff happen. It's the people who came from somewhere else. There's an older generation of 30-somethings who are involved in PICA and the architecture/design scene (fueled in many ways by Weiden & Kennedy). They put on regular events and festivals and lectures - which, by the way, you can volunteer for to avoid paying anything to take part in - and they run the small firms and design shops, which are popping up all over town... If you pay attention, you can fill your schedule with events - there are at least 1-3 per week that are worth checking out (especially if you expand your scope to dance, fashion, book readings, etc).

Assuming you've got a job, you can find a nice apartment (or house) for a relatively low cost, and then you can either start frequenting the endless number of great bars, or you can get productive and make shit happen for yourself. The great thing about Portland is that you can easily drop-out, smoke weed, drink great beer and spend your evenings on your porch or your backyard, or, because there aren't 2 million other creative people trying to do the exact same thing you're doing, you can actually stay up late, make something cool and actually get it into stores, galleries, or wherever it needs to be... Or maybe open your own design store... It really seems possible in Portland, whereas in New York, I think you either need a trust fund or some deep connections to actually get something off the ground.

In terms of places to live, you can find just about anything in Portland. Or, well, maybe not anything. You won't find many (any?) ethnic neighborhoods. However, live in Alberta and you'll feel like you're in Williamsburg 5-7 years ago. Live in Northwest and you'll be in the West Village combined with Chelsea. The near East side is even starting to immitate the meat packing district - with bars, clubs and event spaces hidden behind dirty industrial facades. Of course, the scale of all of these areas is much smaller, and you'll start to see the same people after a week or two of frequenting any neighborhood... but maybe that's a good thing...?


I don't know what's up with those posts about people not dressing up to go out. Although I wouldn't say it's the edgiest of fashion, I certainly think the girls who go out in downtown Portland are as dressed up as they are in NYC...

Oh yeah - and in terms of reasonable salary, assuming you don't have any kids and you're not putting your husband/wife/partner through school or supporting a heroine addiction, you can easily live comfortably for $24K. You're not going to be saving a lot, and you have to shop the sale racks, but you can easily get by on that little. I even made it one year on about $18K and didn't make many sacrifices, except that all my family members got Nike employee store stuff for Christmas...

I would say 30,000 is on the low side if you ever expect to drive a car or buy a house. And I would definitely agree with the earlier post about the fact that there is almost no cultural diversity here...this city is Whiter than the driven snow. I would also say that if you possess any level of concern about the lack of sophistication of the native Oregonians who are "really not that involved in the cultural scene," you may want to stay where you are. The reality is that much of the development and evolution that has gone on in this town in the last few years has been inspired and driven by people that were born and raised here. What has always made Portland "Portland" is that it is not NYC.

You will definitely need a car. Compared to NY, the transit system here is a friggin joke. You can take one of two little toy trains over a 15 mile radius that runs in 2 directions (two!!!!) and is centralized in the downtown area, where it is ridiculously expensive to live in comparison to what you get paid. If you live anywhere other than downtown, you will find that not having a car can be a real pain. Also, once you get out of the metropolitan area, you will find many strip malls and much poorly planned urban sprawl.
Sorry to be a downer...just giving you information I wish I had had.

Yeah, I was driving on SE 82nd Avenue the other day and was quite disappointed with what I saw. Everyone seemed to always praise the way Portland was planned but really, outside of the inner core, the city looks just like any other low density American city. The urban growth boundary doesn't necessarily make the city more dense, it just makes it tougher for developers to build outside of the boundary. Not like the boundary encloses a small area either. But then again, don't most cities look like this?

The trolleys also seem to be a bit empty... at least when you get out to the upper part of the Interstate Avenue line.

the key to the above entry is ' outside the inner core'. Very few western American cities actually have a lively downtown core....one where you find activity at all times of the day, every day. This is what makes Portland special. It doesn't get praise from urban designers for avoiding suburban sprawl. Name one city from the midwest to the west coast that did. The fact that thousands of people do live and work in the downtown, goose hollow, northwest 23rd, and the central east industrial district is what makes this city great.

let's be realistic here......comparing the transit system of portland to that of new york is ludicrous. Portland's system is about 30 years old. Portland only had 500,000 people in the most recent census. The streetcar is a joke of an example of mass transit. But it's incredibly handy for those who live downtown , the pearl district, or northwest 23rd. The bus system is what is most useful here. And again, of course it's not that of NY, or Boston, but it's badass for a city this size.

Living in Portland without a car is no problem if you stick to these inner core areas. Hawthorne/Belmont, even out to 52nd is no problem without a car. A car does come in handy of course. It's not an inconvenience as it might be in NY.

I'm not trying to single anybody out, but some of these so called problems with the transit and planning of the city are ridiculous because all you have to do is visit a sample of American cities, and you'll see how special Portland is. It's a nice option to the Boston/Philly/NY/Chicago scene, and the only thing even closely similar to those cities is the fact that you don't need a car, actually can live in a dense environment, and perhaps the building scale of the neighborhoods (to Philly, or Boston).

Salaries suck, there are a lot of white people, who you'd think had never seen black people. Portland seems to bare the burden of taking care of the state, I think it's 50% of the state's tax income comes from Multnomah County. Also, the unemployment perks are great for the unemployed, but they suck in the long run because they further drag down the few productive areas of Oregon's economy.

i think portland is great. . . as a town/ small city to live in and as an urban study.

the thing about portland's MAX line is that is was interjected into the urban fabric after the city and automobile dominated. no other city has had that level of success of integrating a complete and brand new transit system.

yes, se 82nd, sandy blvd are stip mall haven's but all US city have those similar areas.

in my opinion, salaries in architecture are livable in this city. that's not to say you're going to get ahead of the curve soon, or even ever, but it beats the cost of living in boston (which i'm most familiar with) and nyc. my girlfriend said that this was the first city she lived in where she could move to her most desirable neighborhood immediately (nw 21st/ 23rd). her other cities (bostn, nyc, san francisco) were so expensive that she had to live in crappy neighborhoods then move (if even possible).

interstate max line: it might be sparsely populated due to north portlands density west of I-5 (where i live) but some background information is neede here. the interstate max line goes through what used to be a "bad" neighborhood and even today, it's rising and yes, still affordable. the main reason for this track alignment was to eventually extend this line over the columbia river and into vancouver, wa. put to a vote the last time, washingtonians voted against funds to bring the max across the river. this cost would be bared by both vancouver and portland. it's my guess that the max line will make it over the river one day linking portland and her edge city bedroom community of vancouver. currently, the interstate max line terminates at the portland expo center. so, it's possible to land at pdx and take the train all the way in to major convention areas without renting a car (expo center, lloyd center, convention center, downtown, PGE park, Rose Garden). if you're a tourist visiting portland, you could easily see the best of portland without having the need of a car other than a few taxis. depending on where you live, you could easily get around without having a car (barring any visit to the spectacular outdoors near by).

but does Portland have songbirds that replicate the sounds of car alarms? can't beat that! ;)

Hey - if you're not convinced about the urban growth boundary in Portland, go to Denver. Are you kidding me...? That urban growth boundary is an amazing thing. Go up in the West hills and look at all the farmland stretching from the edge of the city to the Coast mountain range. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but at least it keeps things reasonable... Denver is totally out of control. The suburbs go from Boulder to Kansas and down to New Mexico...

The thing that's great about Portland, is that people complain if their commute takes 20 minutes. Unless you're working out at Intel, you should be able to get to work in 15 minutes or so. And there aren't any 10 lane highways clogged with millions of crazed commuters...

When I lived in Portland, we had an employee who lived out on like NE 78th and she rode her bike to our office in the Pearl District (downtown) every day. Even during the winter. She got a little wet, but that's what gortex is for... If she didn't feel like riding home, she just threw her bike on the front of the bus...

Speaking of bikes, people in Portland are actually somewhat conscious of riders. There aren't a million taxi drivers who have absolutely no regard for your existence - and there are actually bike lanes. In fact, there are even a couple of bike routes - special streets that are designated as commuter routes for bicycles...

yeah. that's ankeny street. that's my street... and yr totally right about denver. that shit actually goes from fort collins to new mexico.

I had some trouble with bikers at first. It was a bit hard to seem them at night and I almost ran over a couple of them.

actually, marc. . . the car alarms here are the sound of a chainsaws cutting old growth. that'll perk up the ears of anybody around in a hurry!

i forgot to mention the bike. it's actually a very viable way of commuting. in my office alone, they're probably 10 people of 45 who commute via bike. people ride in all weather. i've even heard of people riding from vancouver. . . over the 205 if you can believe that. . . and they work in downtown! biking is an option here that may not be an option in other cities.

After reading this thread, I sort of want to move to Portland.