Looking for help relocating to Oregon from Florida. (Portland, Eugene: transplants, 2013)

[Change of pace]

Hi all.
I have researched from Port Angeles, Washington to southern Oregon. Deciding on where to relocate your family is incredibly tough when you have never been to the area. And yes we plan to visit before making the leap. I think we have settled on southern Oregon. I will start with some of my concerns (in no particular order).

1. Schools. My two girls start school soon. Where can I find a good school system from K-12? Is there a good university nearby (2-3 hours)?
2. My wife and my kids (half) are Vietnamese. Somewhere this is not a negative issue but embraced or better yet ignored
3. Sprawl- Being from St. Augustine, Florida and seeing places that I loved like St. Aug, and the Keys, I know what can happen in 15 years. It seems like Bend might be becoming like St. Augustine from what I have read. Except in downtown St.Augustine the traffic is like sitting in a 105 degree parking lot. It takes forty five minutes just to drive through three miles of downtown. I would not want to move to an outskirt of an area to have it blow up around me in 5-10 years. a 30-45 minute commute to work is fine. Honestly this move is for my kids and one day their kids. I think about where we want to establish roots and Florida with cities like Jacksonville, Daytona and Orlando surrounding us is not the place I want them to settle into.
4. And of course crime. Drugs are everywhere so I am really more worried about violent crimes like home invasions, kidnappings and rape. Not that I want Meth shoved down our throat but lets face it, Oregon might have some drug issues, Florida has drug issues and 50 dead at a night club shooting.

That being said of course I do have some wants, which are flexible. We are looking for homes in the 300-375 range on 2-5 acres if possible. 30-45 minutes away from work but less than 10 minutes to a small store to pick up bread and milk. I would love to live on the snowy side of the Cascades or around the Rouge River.(that is very flexible) Looking for clean wilderness activities like rafting, camping, hiking, snow skiing close to home. Would like a town near by (within 45 minutes) that can satisfy our clothing, food needs and festival, microbrewery wants. I know it's a tall order.

We found some great homes in Klamath Falls but I stopped looking into it when my wife read the air quality is so bad in winter you need to wear a mask when outside. Any truth to this? If not would it fit the bill?

Does Bend really have that much more to do outside than the Ashland/ Medford/ Grants Pass area? If so what? Not just the skiing is better on a bigger mountain please. Sliding down a hill would be new to us. I mean a whole other activity like, you can white water raft in Bend but not in Ashland. (not true probably but trying to give an example)

Your help is so much appreciated and not taken lightly. Thank you for all your input.

[PNW-type-gal]

The only two universities are Southern Oregon University in Ashland and Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. There are a number of community colleges - Roseburg, Grants Pass, Medford, Klamath Falls.

Oregon is not known for having excellent K-12. The schools vary, of course, but generally you find better schools within city limits. Your house wish list and your school wish list are not really compatible. To get acreage (and you are not likely to find 2-5 acres that cheap, not with a livable house) you'll need to be really outside any city limits. You might find it outside Grants Pass, but I really do not recommend the Josephine County area outside of the city limits of Grants Pass - there are almost no services, including sheriff, fire and ambulance, as the county residents routinely chose very low property taxes over any services. If you are from a city, where you can count on calling 911 and having someone show up, you won't have that ability.

The difference between St Augustine and most cities in Oregon is that Oregon has urban growth boundaries, which sort of limit city sprawl and metastasis, so you tend to not get mile on mile of houses and strip malls, at least outside of the huge Portland metro area. The spouse is from Gainesville/Crescent Beach, so we are there visiting on a pretty regular basis.

Most of the non-coastal cities in Southern Oregon have air inversion problems in the winter. The cities tend to be in valley bowls and the stagnant air gets trapped. Klamath Falls in the northern extent of the Basin and Range country, the very top of a huge bowl (sort of the way Redding is for California's Central Valley) so in the right air conditions it can trap in a lot of particulate pollution. In the summer we can also get smoke from wildfires trapped in the valleys and that can make the air particularly nasty. The last really bad year in the Rogue Valley was 2013, when the fire season started in June.

The Bend metro area (Bend -Redmond - Sunriver - La Pine) is about 165,000, the Medford metro area (Ashland, Jacksonville, Medford, Central Point, Eagle Point, Gold Hill, Rogue River, Grants Pass) is about 210,000.

Bend and Ashland are somewhat similar in that their primary attraction tends to be to tourists and retiree/second home buyers. Bend's tourists tend to be the outdoor types (Mt Bachelor is has many more skiing runs - and has more reliable snow - than Mt Ashland) and Ashland's tourists tend to be the winery-art-Shakespeare Festival type, but the cities are similar in that they rely on that sector and are overpriced compared to surrounding cities.

Medford/Ashland is 5 hours from Portland, 6 hours from San Francisco. Bend is 2.5 hours from Portland. Bend probably has a few more outdoor activities within an hour or so than Medford does, but it is close to a wash.

[Tulippsy]

My suggestion is to focus on the western valleys - basically everything along I-5. But the bigger question is whether you will need jobs, what type and where you can find employment. That will determine a lot right there.

By the way, my husband and I are recent transplants from South Florida, so I completely understand why you are leaving. We have lived in Portland and now, in Southern Oregon near Medford. We loved Portland, but wanted a slower pace and lower cost of living. Things work much differently here than they do in Florida, so if you have any specific questions, please feel free to send me a direct message.

Best of luck!

[Change of pace]

Thank you both so much for your insight. My wife is a clinical pharmacist which Medford actually has a position posted for right now, but I doubt it will be there by the time we can get there. I am a paramedic/firefighter but really not interested in doing it any more. I was thinking EMT, or patient care tech at a hospital, or home improvement(I used to have my own business before 2007) or even being a postal worker. Maybe start my own business making reclaimed furniture or something. Whatever I can get or do.

PNW Gal thanks for the tip about Josephine County and yes I like being around public services. And after looking up urban growth boundaries I understand a bit more, thank you.

So knowing what you know about our needs do you all have a first and second option? You can throw my needs of acreage out the window and I am still open to central and northern Oregon. I can suck it up with the grey and rain if it's the best for my girls. I just don't want to live downtown anywhere and if I could walk to some forest/trails from my house that would be huge.

[PNW-type-gal]

The larger the city, the better the job prospects. Since nearly 80% of Oregon's population lives in the Willamette Valley (Eugene in the south to Portland in the north), that is where the majority of the job opportunities are.

Portland is Oregon's "big city" - by Oregon standards the traffic is horrendous, as is the sprawl. You'd probably want to stay out on the very edges. The next largest cities or Salem and Eugene, but they are nowhere near the size of Portland. Both of them have smaller towns surrounding them that might be a good option.

I have friends who live in Silverton and love it, but they are now all commuting to Salem for work and they don't like the two-lane back road drive every day.

Outdoor opportunities are pretty much everywhere. Maybe not right in your back yard, but never that far of a drive.

Weather-wise, if you want to stay in more populated areas, you've got:

Willamette Valley - long cool damp cloudy winters, short mild summers, a definite spring and fall. Minor amounts of ice and snow in winter, usually for a very short time.
Rogue Valley (Grants Pass south to Ashland and the California border) - similar cool damp winters but much shorter than the Willamette Valley winter, distinct spring and fall, long hot summers (avg high 80s-low 90s, can hit 100°, but very dry). Also minimal ice snow and a little fog thrown in.
Central Oregon (Bend) - Long cloudy cold winters with frosts/freezes through June. Definitely some snow in the winter, although it doesn't stick around all that long, except in the higher country. Short spring, not always distinct. Short summer, mild temps (80s, occasional 90s). Short lovely fall.

I haven't included the Oregon Coast or Eastern Oregon because the cities are small, nothing all that close to 20,000, which makes the job scene difficult.

[Bees46]

Eugene is a pretty great place for families. Most of the schools are good (especially the ones that feed South Eugene or Sheldon high schools.) There are lots of family-friendly events. Traffic isn't bad and there isn't much sprawl. Acreage isn't easy to find, though.

The UO means more diversity than many places in Oregon.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

The only two universities are Southern Oregon University in Ashland and Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. There are a number of community colleges - Roseburg, Grants Pass, Medford, Klamath Falls.

OSU has opened a campus in Bend.

Home | OSU Cascades | Oregon State University

[Larry Caldwell]

Don't give up on acreage. My wife and I were shopping for 5 acres and a house, and ended up with 90 acres and a house, with a creek in the back yard, meadows along the creek and timbered hills that put $50k in our pockets after we had been here 20 years. We're rural rather than suburban.

[Change of pace]

Thank you all for your input, you have made some really good points for me to look into. PNW gal thanks again for breaking down the different areas of weather throughout the state. It is hard for this Floridian to grasp that the weather can be so different such a short distance away. In Florida it is pretty simple, hot and humid here and everywhere around here eight hours in any direction. Thanks again all, I really appreciate the info.

[Nell Plotts]

Keep in mind the fact that Ashland is just a few miles south of Medford. If you can find a house in the Ashland school district working in Medford won't be an issue. I believe that schools that serve parents who are academics are usually stronger. Ashland and some schools in Eugene would meet that test.