Best Fit Portland Neighborhood? (Sunnyside: condos, homes, theatre)

[creeve]

Hi Alison
If you go to Portland Monthly Magazine they have two articles posted that you might find helpful, one on Portland's private and public schools and one on Portland neighborhoods. I just ordered you their April 2007 and December 2007 issues that has the full articles from their site. So hopefully you will get them in the mail soon.
Talk soon, Caroline

[NextAdventure]

Hi Caroline,

Thank you! That was very thoughtful. We'll look forward to reading those two issues.

Alison

[hts]

If I'm not mistaken, you can also just download the PDFs for those 2 articles. Here's one of them (the other on school reports was too large to upload).

[Nature Girl]

I would LOVE a Victorian home in a safe neighborhood in Portland! I hope you find what you're looking for; you will have a lot more to choose from there, than in the suburbs.

[NextAdventure]

First of all, thanks to HTS and Nature Girl for your advice and well-wishes!

UltraVioletMama, we looked at some neat Oregon City homes online. Thank you for that tip.

Are there other small towns near to Portland we should be considering?

And the school report info was VERY helpful, if overwhelming. The statistics show Lake Oswego has very, very strong schools. Inside Portland itself, there seem to be mixed results. We noted, for instance, that Alameda Elementary did well, but other schools not far away did not. So, if we use that school report as a guide, we clearly will narrow down our in-city choices.

Please keep your thoughts and comments coming, we appreciate and need all of them!

Alison

[UltraVioletMama]

Originally Posted by NextAdventure

First of all, thanks to HTS and Nature Girl for your advice and well-wishes!

UltraVioletMama, we looked at some neat Oregon City homes online. Thank you for that tip.

Are there other small towns near to Portland we should be considering?

And the school report info was VERY helpful, if overwhelming. The statistics show Lake Oswego has very, very strong schools. Inside Portland itself, there seem to be mixed results. We noted, for instance, that Alameda Elementary did well, but other schools not far away did not. So, if we use that school report as a guide, we clearly will narrow down our in-city choices.

Please keep your thoughts and comments coming, we appreciate and need all of them!

Alison

Another small town that has older homes is Newberg. It is a long slow drive into downtown Portland however, but the town is very quaint. Lake Oswego has great schools, but most homes again are of new construction, and this will be one of the priciest neighborhoods here.

[thomasw98]

Two questions:

1. What's the deal with the very high crime rate for Portland (see city-data page for Portland), especially the theft rate?

2. Is there any data source that breaks this down by neighborhood? On the other hand, if there are neighborhoods with lower crime, then that must mean there are also neighborhoods with extremely high crime (so that the average comes out high for the city versus USA average).

Sort of frightening...

[jfwells]

Originally Posted by thomasw98

Two questions:

1. What's the deal with the very high crime rate for Portland (see city-data page for Portland), especially the theft rate?

2. Is there any data source that breaks this down by neighborhood? On the other hand, if there are neighborhoods with lower crime, then that must mean there are also neighborhoods with extremely high crime (so that the average comes out high for the city versus USA average).

Sort of frightening...

Try PortlandMaps for localized crime information. Just type in an address and click on the "Crime" tab on the upper right. The following is an example for a downtown address:

PortlandMaps Detail Report

I do not know exact statistics, but I would say that Portland does not have a high crime rate overall. Probably quite typical for a city its size.

[jfwells]

Originally Posted by NextAdventure

Are there other small towns near to Portland we should be considering?

Not if you want to have any sort of realistic public transportation.

If your initial list of neighborhood attributes is still valid, you would like most of the close in east-side neighborhoods. In order of approximate school quality:

Irvington
Alameda
Grant Park
Hollywood
Laurelhurst
Eastmoreland/Westmoreland/Sellwood
Ladds Addition
Mt. Tabor
Sunnyside (Hawthorne & Bellmont)

Good luck!

[NextAdventure]

Thank you, jfwells!

Prioritizing the neighborhoods by schools is EXACTLY the kind of info we need.

Affording a house in Irvington or Alameda may be a different matter...

Are some of these neighborhoods considered more "up and coming"? And conversely are there others that are likely in decline?

Again, thank you!

Best Regards,
Alison