Happy to field any questions you might have. Moved to the area in 1996 and have zero intentions of living anywhere else despite the grim pictures you might see on the news or hear in the PSF.
Father of 5 who are either in or graduated from the Beaverton School District. Very pleased, especially with the High School. I bought my first home in 2001 - a little ranch burger in a great neighborhood nestled in the armpit of HWY 26 and 217. I loved the neighborhood so much that I bought the house two doors down in 2015 when my wife was pregnant with twins. Much larger house that needed a LOT of updating, but absolutely no regrets.
Absent traffic, I am 9 minutes from downtown. With traffic, no-telling and yes, traffic can be frustrating. However, I am a mile's walk to the Beaverton Transit Center, so I can take the light rail downtown, to the airport and many points in between. In fact, 95% of the time, I walk to the Transit Center, hop on a train for a 17 minute commute to Tualatin and walk 1.5 miles to my office from there. Much better for my blood pressure than sitting on 217 in mind-numbing traffic.
Yes, traffic is bad here. It is NOTHING like Seattle or the Bay Area or LA or San Diego or pick a name of another city in the US. It's just a small city which never planned on having this many people move here. Plus, there's not a whole lot of room for building more roads unless you want to sacrifice some of the natural beauty this city has in droves. Blessedly, we have options - bike lanes abound and I'd rank the public transportation here as excellent, clean and mostly safe (though you gotta look out and be aware in certain areas). So for a guy that can go 4 days at home and 1 in the office, the aggravation you'd experience commuting by car would be minimal.
I've never felt the need to avoid any areas though some might give me pause if I'm leaving a car unattended. Having lived in Dallas and Jackson, MS and marrying a woman from Detroit, I laugh at anybody saying Portland has some sketchy neighborhoods. Even the sketchy parts have houses where people take pride in their little kingdoms. Plus, some of these areas might have hidden treasure of dining or drinking or stripping so no need to really be fearful. There isn't an 8-Mile here.
That said, downtown has been scarred recently. Boarded up windows and vacant storefronts are a sad reminder of what was once an amazing, clean, vibrant and SAFE downtown area. I worked downtown 8 years and loved it. Sadly, the homeless camps, graffiti, vandalism, destruction and chaos have marred an otherwise wonderful place to be. My hope is it gets back, but we need different city leadership - I'll save further political rants for another forum.
If you are an outdoors person, well.....this is the best place in the country to live. From my driveway, I'm an hour and small change to the coast. I'm also an hour and small change from Mt. Hood and smaller car trips take you to the Columbia River Gorge, Coastal Mountains, Willamette Valley Wine Country, white water rafting, fly fishing, paddle boarding, camping, hiking, biking, berry picking, zip-lining just to name a few. When it was 115 degrees here, my family was sitting in the Kilchis River with temps in the low 80s just 70 minutes from my house in Beaverton. You can escape the heat here - can't do that in too many places of this fine country. Good luck escaping 115 in Texas.
As far as where to live? Well, I'm biased. I'm all for fungster, hippy-dippy, cool sections of SE Portland or NE Portland or perhaps NW Portland - but to visit, not live. That's a personal preference. I like bigger streets with elbow room. I like sidewalks for my kids. I like having an HOA that prevents people from parking RVs or boats in their driveways or in front of their houses. I like an HOA that holds homeowners accountable and won't let them put appliances in their yards or let weeds ruin curb appeal. I don't want neighbors with chickens or goats or unicorns or dingos. Rat and coyote problems are bad enough without Hipster Farmer Franny building a chicken coop behind my fence. I don't like driving residential neighborhoods with my head on a swivel looking out for militant bikers who dare you to hit them. I don't like tiny little streets with parked cars on both sides forcing you to play chicken with oncoming drivers or scared to death that a child or pet will dart out behind a car. I like our neighborhood because all the homes were built in the mid 60s and the mature vegetation and trees offer shade in the summer. It's also closed to thru traffic, so it feels safe, despite being a football field away from busy 217.
And it also used to be that Beaverton was the boring, sterile suburb where people from Nike, Intel and Tek called home. It was a land of chain restaurants situated in mundane strip malls with a bedtime of 9pm. But a funny thing has happened - Beaverton is blowing up! From my house with a walk of a mile or less, I have
BG Food Cartel with 30 different food carts and a giant beer garden. Downtown Beaverton has been completely overhauled and includes
Ex Novo,
Bigs Chicken,
Syndicate Wine Bar,
Decarli Italian and more. Burmese food with robots that bring out your meal, Korean food, incredible Ramen and coming soon, my favorite brewery on the planet:
Breakside There are dive bars, tap houses, an incredible bowling alley with great food and beer, all the cool fast food joints (Shake Shack opened less than a mile from my house this summer, son worked there, terrific burgers!) and of course, strp clubs. You can (and I have) hit 2 pretty solid peeler joints by foot or via a $6 Uber ride. You can Google Beaverton strip clubs for more.
Anyhow, there you go. Would have responded earlier but I got a time out for pointing out that a certain pillow salesmen was once a user of a variation of cocaine popular in the 1980s. PM me with any further questions, happy to assist anytime.
This is the kind of information I'm looking for. We are undecided on where we would live. Online I have heard good things about moreland but it's online so people tend to just complain and it's hard to put together a true story on anything. In our trips there we certainly like the hawthorne area for visiting anyway but have no idea what it would be like to live there. We don't want people breaking into our car every night 
