Most affordable suburb!

BusinessWeek posted their annual list of the most affordable suburbs for 2009. Cedar Mill was chosen this year for Oregon! Each year the editors select one affordable suburb near the biggest city in each state “where residents can find the best quality of life for their money in 2009.” We knew there was something special about this place! images.businessweek.com/ss/09/02/0219_affordable_suburbs/38.htm

The editor says, “The selected suburbs were limited to towns within 25 miles of the most populated city, with populations of 5,000 to 60,000 people, median family incomes of $51,000 to $120,000, and lower-than-average crime rates. We weighted a variety of factors including livability (short commutes, low pollution, green space), education (well-educated residents, high test scores), crime (low personal and property crime), economy (high job growth, low unemployment rate, high family income), and affordability (median household income, cost of expenditures).

“Affordability was most heavily weighted in our calculations. We penalized places with bad weather, a lack of racial diversity, high divorce rates, and few children.”

And this just in—Business Week rated Portland as the #1 Unhappiest City, based on a variety of factors including depression rates, suicide rates, divorce rates, crime, unemployment, population loss, job loss, weather, and green space. So stay on this side of the hills!

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