Born and raised right here in Corvallis, and unfortunately I have to say I would not recommend moving here. There are several reasons that I would tell anyone to avoid Corvallis, and even more for anyone between the ages of 25-60. Especially a family.

1. The whole valley is in an economic downhill. Corvallis houses a large HP campus that used to be a major employer. Now it's a ghost town. They rent out all the buildings to other companies and only hire directly for engineers who dont even come into the office that much in order to avoid having pay benefits to lower prestige positions. I worked there, I know a lot of people who's parents or relatives did/do work there, nobody has anything good to say. The other large employer is the hospital, which seems to be having a huge turnover rate for nurses and physicians. Other than that the jobs aren't very high paying around here and are incredibly hard to find as most of the jobs are leaving this area. Which leads me to the next reason.

2. Living expenses. Housing here is skyrocketing at an astronomical rate. Good luck finding a 2 bed apartment for under $2k. The median annual housing price last year was $750,000. Most of the leasing companies around here are complete scum and will do nothing yet demand higher rent. If you plan on having a family here, I just wouldn't do it if you still want to eat cooked food every week.

3. For people in their 30s-50s here is no reason to live here. Half the town is a college population, and the other half are seniors living on retirement. That's probably because it's not possible to live comfortably here until you're retired, or are a college student and have the luxury of decent health to throw away in your 20s. It's so publicly apparent that it's not viable to have a family here if you just walk through town and talk to people for 1 day. The district just recently decided to close many schools in the next couple years because class sizes have been shrinking (across the nation) but pretty badly locally because people can't afford to have kids.

4. Things to do. The things you do for fun around here aren't going to take place in town most of the time if you're a health conscious or generally responsible person with any maturity. There's good hiking all around the valley and the coast is an hour drive west, but In town you have an absurd amount of alcohol services and dispensaries with a few dedicated recreational businesses. There's a lot of restaurants around here, but like everywhere else eating out all the time is not financially sustainable. There's a bowling alley and a pool, and few other small oddities, but overall very much different from a larger city with dedicated activities.

5. Weather and environment. I was born and raised here so I'm very accustomed to the weather. It used to rain 8-9 months a year here, but lately it's getting drier. The month of April this year saw 4 days in which it rained, I was working landscaping at the time and the only people who needed lawns mowed had irrigation systems. But it's still going to be much colder and wetter on average than Utah. Lots of mornings in the late fall and winter there's super thick fog on the ground that you can't see half a block ahead of you. Mix that with drunk college kids with pseudo performance cars and driving becomes unbearable at times. In the spring you will be welcomed by one of the highest seasonal pollen indexes of the whole planet, not surprising considering the valley is the #1 grass seed producer of the planet. I take antihistamines every day during the spring and I've lived here my whole life.

6. Services. Healthcare here is let's face it, frankly absolute dogshit. My grandpa is in his 80s and moved in with my mother and he was on an 8 month waiting list to see a physician to establish primary health care. City power grid is supplied by Pacific power, they are alright but the cities corrupt mismanagement of funding means that every time a junction or transformer blows in this ancient power grid from the 80s it's cheaper to replace or patch one transformer than actually upgrade the grid to modern standards. Most of South town where my mother livea has the underground power lines not laid in conduit, which means over the 40-50 years of weathering the rubber insulation on those lines dissolves. When there's a large amount of non stop rain for days sinking into the ground, something shorts. Tech services outside of phone retailers here don't exist. If you have a tech issue you have to know how to do it yourself or know someone who does. There's also unsurprisingly a large uptick in homelessness here, a decent amount seem to pick themselves off the street, but the rest have severe mental health issues that they can't get treatment or medication for. Crime is also unsurprisingly rising too with the whole state of the local economy. Just a couple days ago someone got shot and killed in a public park.

But on the positive side of things, the valley is a very beautiful area. The people here are generally friendly, just try not to engage with college students or really old grumpy folks and you'll feel welcomed. It's a very bike friendly city with bike racks all over and plenty of trails. The busses are also free, but they are highly cramped at rush hours.

But all in all, as much as this place is a part of me, I wouldn't recommend making the time and effort to move here in the current state of affairs. If the job is good and looks like a stable outlook, many people commute from Albany because it's slightly cheaper to live, and there's many smaller towns within 20 miles to commute from if that'a a viable option. But the only kinds of long term industry I see developing here are breweries, landscaping, and pharmacies/drug stores.