Young teen couple from Utah to Portland, need help! (Sherwood: 2014, affordable apartments)

[yunglean]

Hey, I am a 20 year old teen currently living in Utah with my girlfriend. We have been saving up for the last few months to get a decent car and make our move towards Portland.

Now that we have a car, we're ready to sell our apartment contract (due to spring semester demands) and head out within 3 weeks, hopefully by April. We would like to live in Portland, preferably closer to downtown and specially closer to jobs in the area.

A little bit about our interests and reason we want to move:

-We love contemporary art, we run a digital art etsy store on the side which we plan to develop further
-We have always dreamed of taking a hike through Oregon national parks and coast areas since Utah is plain old desert
-We want to be part of an art scene
-We want diversity in religion and culture, Utah is Mormon in every direction
-We're not worried about college just yet

We need your help:

(Most of our savings were used to get a car, however, we do have about 2500-3000 dollars left. We don't spend very much.)

We need an average couple's studio apartment or small rental home within 500-750 per month,
which areas of the city are home to affordable apartments?

We will be moving without jobs there but we have extensive experience with call centers and customer service,
are there many call center jobs and/or retail jobs (mostly for a few months to get settled)?

How is it like to have a car in a city? We want to visit the coast very often so we need the car but we do have road bikes

What are some important advice you would give to us, in particular to finding affordable places to live?
I know it's a bold move in life but we don't want to be stuck in Utah forever, better move while we're young

Your help is highly appreciated!

[EnricoV]

That's not a lot of rent. You're probably going to want to look on the east side. And if you go a bit south, like in SouthEast around Powell Blvd, you might find some of the older 70s-ish apartments that will fall in that range. You might find studios elsewhere, but you don't want to have a car and live downtown IMO.

[crisw]

Call center jobs are pretty common. Airbnb is opening a big office downtown and will hire lots of people soon- Airbnb confirms plans for Portland hub, plans to hire 160 this year | OregonLive.com

[yunglean]

Originally Posted by crisw

Call center jobs are pretty common. Airbnb is opening a big office downtown and will hire lots of people soon- Airbnb confirms plans for Portland hub, plans to hire 160 this year | OregonLive.com

I know call center jobs are easy to get, so that sounds very promising for us.

We want to reserve our car mostly for weekend travels to the coast, is it any good driving to work there? I assume most of these jobs are near rail or bus stops right?

[spicymeatball]

500-750 will get you a studio or if you're lucky a one bedroom (closer to $750 than to $500). If you're OK with sharing a house with others you could do it probably.

[spicymeatball]

Originally Posted by yunglean

I know call center jobs are easy to get, so that sounds very promising for us.

We want to reserve our car mostly for weekend travels to the coast, is it any good driving to work there? I assume most of these jobs are near rail or bus stops right?

The MAX serves a pretty small part of the city. Like to 90 percent of the metro's population it's essentially useless. Bus stops yes, but keep in mind if you work graveyard you may need a taxi to get home and some routes come only every half hour or even every hour.

[oldtintype]

To 90% of the metro's population it's useless? Not so based on the statistics of how many commuters they carry.
Very few buses run every hour--I can't think of a single one. There are a few that run every 20-30 minutes, but we're talking about Portland proper--perhaps you're talking about buses to places like Sherwood which are essentially just commuter hours?

[EnricoV]

Originally Posted by spicymeatball

The MAX serves a pretty small part of the city. Like to 90 percent of the metro's population it's essentially useless. Bus stops yes, but keep in mind if you work graveyard you may need a taxi to get home and some routes come only every half hour or even every hour.

Graveyard? You mean all the folks who get off at 8 am? Yeah, not many buses running at that hour.

Here's what Tri-Met says about their statistics:

Ridership trends

Riders boarded a TriMet bus, MAX train or WES train 99.3 million times in Fiscal Year 2010.

Weekly ridership on buses, MAX and WES has increased for all but one year since 1988.

For more than a decade, ridership has been increasing faster than other indicators of regional growth, including population and automobile vehicle miles traveled.

TriMet carries more people than any other U.S. transit system its size.

Rider characteristics

84% of riders say they have a car available but prefer to ride TriMet, or they choose not to own a car because they prefer TriMet.

80% of residents in the TriMet service area (age 16 and older) say they ride TriMet to some degree, and 43% ride "a couple of times a month or more."

About half (51%) of riders say they use a combination of buses and MAX, 34% use MAX only, and 13% use buses only.

77% of frequent/regular riders say they approve of the job we're doing.

[Steve Pickering]

Twenty is not a teen.

And dead end call center work is available. There are always jobs because it is a high turnover industry.

We have hundreds of teens and young adults living on the streets already. Almost all of them had posts just like yours, almost word for word.

[SETabor]

Originally Posted by Steve Pickering

We have hundreds of teens and young adults living on the streets already. Almost all of them had posts just like yours, almost word for word.

While I may not agree with Steve on many of his posts, I agree with this. A call center job isn't a promising job to better things and I'm bored with where I grew up isn't a great reason to move.

That being said, you're young and now's the time to be a bit foolhardy.