Qs about Lake Oswego in Multnomah County & Arnold Creek Neighborhood (Portland: fit in, buying a house)

[Scotch99]

We're house-hunting for our upcoming move to the Portland area. We prefer suburban-stye living with larger lots, great schools, sidewalks (and it drives me nuts to find so few places with sidewalks in the areas I've been searching), and SW part of the metro area given DH's job location. I'd appreciate some help with my questions below.

I've found a couple of possibilities located in Lake Oswego address, but they feed into Stephenson Elementary in Portland and the county is Multnomah instead of Clackamas. Based on my research, the obvious negative is the fact that this part of Lake O pays the higher Multnomah County property taxes and homeowners might get hit with personal income tax in the future. One may say another negative is not feeding into Lake O schools, but Stephenson Elementary, Jackson Middle School and Wilson High School all seem pretty good options for Portland. So are there additional negatives that I haven't thought of? Any advantages? What does it mean to live in Lake O but not part of the same county as the rest of Lake O? I feel like I'm totally missing the benefits.

Next, I'm interested in a couple of houses on the lower $$ range in the Arnold Creek neighborhood. Is this neighborhood a family friendly neighborhood where kids actually play outside on the front yards and play with neighbors? I have found demographics data for Lake O; but nothing for Arnold Park neighborhood. How ethnically diverse are the residents in the Arnold Creek neighborhood -- would we be the only ethnic minority family in that area if we move there?

TIA!

[lemonbutter]

Arnold Creek is typical of most of Portland at about 90% white. You won't see much diversity outside of North/NE Portland. There is a sprinkling of Asian kids and literally 3-4 African American children at Stephenson. That said, just because Portland isn't very diverse doesn't mean that they aren't accepting of ethnic people. I have yet to see any prejudice occur toward any ethnic people but obviously that doesn't mean it doesn't happen (I am not caucasian). There is a large Muslim community in the outer SW area near Arnold Creek and I think ethnic people are starting to move to SW as the gentifrication of NE/N Portland and high prices in SE are pushing them away. My feelings from Lake Oswego is that it can be a bit snobby and I think that part of Portland/Lake Oswego isn't much different. If you can fit in ok, then you'll be fine. I'm not sure about kids playing outside though. You'll probably have to dig deeper into the streets and culdesacs and visit on a sunny day to see if kids play outside. It was a rare occurrence in my experience. I will say that Stephenson and Jackson are very good schools with great extra curricular programs. The after school care at Stephenson is really superb and I've heard that from many parents.

[lemonbutter]

Just wanted to add, that part of Portland is very natural and woodsy as opposed to typical suburban feeling (suburban as in sidewalks and such).

[Scotch99]

Thank you! I appreciate the reply.

[Scotch99]

Update: We'll be moving into the Arnold Creek neighborhood in a month. I really like feel of the neighborhood from our visit and can only hope that we didn't make a mistake buying a house right in the beginning of our move to Oregon. It kind of bugs me that we'll have a Lake O zip/address but we're really going to live in the city of Portland. I would prefer to just tell people we live in Portland since we really are outside the Lake O boundaries. Would our mail still get delivered if we just use "Portland, OR 97035"?

lemonbutter: I visited Stephenson during our last trip to the area and I was told that there may be only two African Americans in the entire school. I hope more minorities will move into the neighborhood in the coming years. Otherwise I guess we'll be in an environment similar to what we're leaving behind here in the midwest. We'll just have to make more of an effort to have our kids participate in activities in the parts of the city where they'll experience more diversity.