Need a new home and looking for A firearm friendy place to rent

[mikemenzie]

Hey all.
Been looking for a place for my mother and I and finally dawned on me to ask ya'll for ideas or advice.
We're in the middle of a sort of forced move - family is a strange beast. We want to make sure we find a place that is firearm friendly, or at least doesn't mind. Heck, if we had our 'druthers, we'd live off the beaten path somewhere with a shop space or garage, and work on projects and keep busy, between target shooting and kayaking, haha.

Our max rent is about $800, plus utilities. We're looking for a 2 or more bedroom, with a garage, basement, large-ish storage room, or something to use as a lapidary/wood shop. Working on the home or property as part of the rent is ok, depending on work needed. I can do most things.

We're looking all over Oregon, and southern Washington, with a preference for places within 30 minutes or so of a river or something we can kayak on, places for hunting, and places for clean target shooting.

We're happy to share hobbies, teach our projects or learn others. We're relatively quiet, unless you count me playing bluegrass as loud as I can get away with, while I work, haha.

Let us know if any of ya'll know of any places out there!

And let me know if there's anything else ya'll'd like to know about us.

-Mike

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[edslhead]

All homes are firearms friendly. Nobody can tell you not to have a gun at your home. Yet.

 

[clearconscience]

$800! Stay as far from portland as possible.

 

[Camelfilter]

Argh! I feel for you, best wishes in your search! Moving blows chunks.

Renting is a tough one to find a good fit (owner/neighborhood/distance to work/shop space etc)...we lucked into where we're at. A single family with 2 car garage & small lawn, rented by the owner. Hoping to stay here until we buy property & build, not sure where yet...so another reason renting is handy for us.

Anyway you can come up a bit on your budget? Might have more luck at about the $1000 to $1100 mark in our market (Salem/Keizer/West Salem/Monmouth/Dallas) on finding a place you'd want to live in.

 

[mikemenzie]

I wish we could come up a bit. We budgeted tight for $800. She's retired and i'm disabled. Haha. All the more reason we need a shop space and things to do. I don't do lazy very well.
Man, it does sound like you guys lucked out! We'd love something like that, haha.
Edslhead - i wish that were true. Had the cops called for a "welfare check" on two different occasions in the past because someone saw me gearing up to just go target shooting, loading a few rifles in my truck. Some people are just silly.

Thanks for the well wishes, folks!

 

[IronMonster]

Come to Idaho, $800 will give you a livable 2 bed house with a garage and it would be hard to live more than 30 minutes from a river AND everyone just expects you to have guns and might even label you a werido if you didn't

 

[mikemenzie]

Haha, we've actually thought about it a bit. My grandparents live in Idaho. We'd definitely have to live in the Northern part, though. Not a fan of most of the land and climate from Boise, south.
We just don't have any real experience renting or living in Idaho, or with Idaho laws that we'd need to worry about and all. Figured staying in Oregon so we don't have to change all the state pertinent things in our lives, or Washington wouldn't be too bad, or too far different from Oregon.
But thanks for the advice. We'll look into it.

 

[teflon6string]

Unless you leave weapons out in plain view on a day your landlord is there for a pre-coordinated reason (new water heater, carpet, repair), I don't see why he/she would even know you have any.

 

[Brutus57]

Come to Idaho, $800 will give you a livable 2 bed house with a garage and it would be hard to live more than 30 minutes from a river AND everyone just expects you to have guns and might even label you a werido if you didn't

I am working on it, count down is less than 3 years....

Brutus Out

 

[etrain16]

$800! Stay as far from portland as possible.

Not just Portland, but all the surrounding 'burbs too. Even in places like Oregon City, $800 won't get you what you're looking for. Prices are ridiculous around the area right now. Good luck in your search.

 

[mkwerx]

I feel for you. When my wife and I were in beaver-town, we were paying $850 for a rathole 2 bed apartment. They were jacking the rent on us, so we moved to Da Grove (Forest Grove) and wound up renting a house for about $1000 a month. Our mortgage payment is only $80 a month more

The further from Portland you go, the better chance you'll have to find a place on that budget, but I'll say that college towns will probably see a bump in rent prices because the landlords have a captive audience.

I don't think a landlord can legally deny you or prohibit you from owning a weapon or multiple weapons, and I've never had a potential landlord even ask about them. Don't ask, don't tell is a good practice anyway.

From the sounds of it ya'll are living on SSI / or pensions - is there any potential you could start some small home-based business to bump your income up and thus your rental budget? Since you're looking for a place with shop space I'm gonna assume you're at least a little handy - maybe something like wrapping up custom fishing rods or something to make a few extra bucks, or building birdhouses/doll houses or small stuff. Something you can do while seated mostly (not knowing your disability, I'm just assuming that standing for long periods is out, but you've got use of your arms/hands?) - maybe find a way to turn your hobbies into something with a little revenue stream.

Good luck!

 

[PaulB47]

I wouldn't worry about guns. If it's not in the rental contract, the landlord has no basis to complain, even assuming he discovers you are armed, and assuming he cares about it.

My nephew in Klamath Falls says that's one of the cheapest places to live. He's renting houses out there. I love that area; my avatar pic was taken right near there, an old lake bed that's nice and flat for long range shooting.

As to renting in Oregon:
Why Renters Are Screwed | Strike-The-Root: A Journal Of Liberty

I personally have an itch for Josephine County (Grants Pass area). I understand the county has no money and there is very little government or cops there.

 

[nwslopoke]

I'm not positive but you may look up Vernonia and anyplace west of there. I had some friends who rented out there and even got some land to go with it. Not sure what others out there were paying. They do risk flooding at the lower parts of town.

 

[JackFrost]

Sadly your budget is not going to afford you much at all. My wife and I were renting in Oregon City back in 2011 and our rent was $800 for a rundown dump of a duplex with zero outdoor space and no carport or garage.
I just spoke with our old neighbors last week, who lived next door and he told me that same place now is renting for $1250. Absolutely insane! Good luck, the housing market is the worst thing to deal with right now!

 

[mikemenzie]

Yeah. Sounds like the same i've been seeing on all the rental websites. I wish for the good old days, when everyone knew a family living on the edge of town who needed some help around the place and had an extra living space they'd let out for some rent and some work done, or something.

We do make things and sort of sell them. Haha. We don't have a storefront or a website and wouldn't know how to work any of it if we did. We do lapidary work, and various other projects to keep busy. We figure we don't drink or do drugs, so projects is the only fun we get, hahaha.

We're looking pretty much all over washington, idaho, arizona and oregon, now, barring only places that are covered in snow year-round, or too far away from a river or something. We don't do "nothing but desert as far as the eye can see" anymore, heh. Even looking at a "rent to own" gig up in Aberdeen, if we can figure out how rent to own even works. The house looks like a heap of "why the heck would anyone want this place", so we're hoping that'll mean the price'll be in a range for us to afford, and that i can do any repairs necessary.

I know no one can legally bar us from living with firearms, and it's not terribly common to have landlords around to see 'em anyway, but i would like to deal with gun-friendly landlords for two reasons: less hassle just in case, and heck, maybe we could get together for a clean target shoot now and again. We're a bit old fashioned in some ways - baking a pie for, or having dinner with, or working in the work shop with the landlords now and again is just a pleasant way to be.

Thanks for all the advice, guys.

 

[PaulB47]

I googled ""klamath falls for rent" and found quite a few places under $800, studio apartments down to $400 on craigslist ads.

If you have no need to live in hot housing markets, why would you want to? I've been trying to pry my wife out of the Portland metro area literally for decades.

 

[mikemenzie]

Haha, yeah, Klamath has a few places, but we've found that nearly all craigslist ads are fake, and a studio won't do much good for a 2 person family unit and a shop space of some kind, heh.

We're looking at New Mexico, now. Firearm laws similar to here. Some a little better, it seems. Mild weather as far as the desert goes, and some rivers, at least.

 

[mikemenzie]

Since i'm here - don't know if i posted an ad on here or not, but we're having a second yard sale this coming weekend, preparing for moving. Shop storage and work benches of many kinds, normal yard sale things, lapidary materials - rocks and gems - about 8000 pounds, handmade jewelry, 12' angler paddleboard project, and other odds and ends. Oh, and a Mosin and a Schmidt-Rubin.
Selling, or figured we'd swap for firearms. We both like 'em, and they're easier to pack up, haha.
-Mike

 

[ThemGunsThough]

For 800, I'd suggest Klamath falls, OR. I have some family there and my sister in law who now lives with us just told me that her rent for a 3 bedroom home with single garage was just under $700 a month. She said that price is average for similar rentals. There are quite a few options to fish at and hunt nearby Klamath Falls.

 

[Koda]

I don't think it comes up much but a landlord can impose a firearm prohibition at any time they want. When I rented I kept mine out of sight and hard to find for the annual inspections.